A MATTER OF 


BUSINESS 


WILLIAM CURTIS STILES 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

ChapT.Z^ Copyright No. 

shft if ■ S ? ■S' 6M<a. 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






. 



















































A Matter of 
Business 

And Other Stories 


BY 


✓ 


WILLIAM CURTIS STILES 


CHICAGO 

Advance Publishing Co 

215 MADISON STREET 
1899 

L- 


fZ3 



2HG45 


Copyright, 1899 

BY 

ADVANCE PUBLISHING CO. 
All rights reserved. 


ONE COPY 


DECEIVED. 



JOHN A. ULRICH, Printer & Binder. 
215 Madison Street, Chicago 




I. A Matter of Business* 


II* On the Whole* 

III* The Avenging Brook* 

















































PREFACE 


The writing of these little stories has been to the author 
a matter mostly of literary recreation. By the nature of them 
they have not been results of any research. The most that 
may properly be claimed for them, perhaps, is a tendency 
to impress some helpful lessons. The story that gives the 
volume its title does not profess to any technical knowledge 
of business as it is conducted to-day. The instances men- 
tioned in the talks of Mr. Ray are actual however, though 
it may be doubted if they are the most flagrant adducible 
by any means. 

It will probably be discerned by the reader that situa- 
tions in life as it really is, do not eventuate as in the story. 
That is merely to say that literature is more ideal than 
experience. I only think such results as I have pictured in 
the endings of my stories are the things that ought to come 
about. 

As the publishers have supposed that these stories are 
deserving the more permanent form in which they here 
appear, I have gained the courage to hope they may be in- 
teresting and acceptable to those who chance to read them. 

Stonington, Conn., 1899. W. C. S. 




FRONTISPAGE. 


We want practical religion to go into all merchandise. 
It will supervise the labeling of goods. It will not allow 
a man to say that a thing was made in one factory when it 
was made in another. It will not allow the merchant to say 
that watch was manufactured in Geneva, Switzerland, 
when it was manufactured in Massachusetts. Practical 
religion will walk along by the store’s shelves and tear off 
all the tags that make misrepresentation. It will not allow 
the merchant to say that is pure coffee, when dandelion- 
root and chicory and other ingredients go into it. It will 
not allow him to say that is pure sugar when there are in it 
sand and ground glass. 

When practical religion gets its full swing in the world, 
it will go down the street; and it will come to that shoe- 
store, and rip off the fictitious soles of many a fine-looking 
pair of shoes, and show that it is pasteboard sandwiched 
between the sound leather. And this practical religion will 
go right into a grocery store; and it will pull out the plug 
of all the adulterated syrups, ar.d it will dump into the 
ash-barrel in front of the store the cassia-bark that is sold 
for cinnamon and the brick-dust that is sold for cayenne 
pepper. And it will shake out the Prussian blue from the 
tea-leaves, and it will sift from the flour the plaster of Paris 
and bone-dust and soap-stone; and it will by chemical 
analysis separate the one-quart of water from the few 
honest drops of cow’s milk, and it will throw out the live 
animalcules from the brown sugar.— Talmage, 





























































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A MATTER OF BUSINESS, 


CHAPTER I. 

BY LYING. 

'HERE was a time when nobody seemed to have 
a doubt about the high character and stand- 
ing of the Lithgow house. The business had 
descended from two or three generations of Lithgows, 
and they had all of them been members of the First 
Church, and men of reputation for integrity in business. 

It was merely the interpolation of a different ideal 
of business that at last impeached this standing in 
Jacques City. One cannot say how those uncomfortable 
intrusions began. But there came a time when methods 
of doing business that had never been questioned in the 
experience of the elder Lithgows began to attract at- 
tention and invite criticism. Let us say that it is the 
toning up of conscience in the breath of a new Christian 
demand for actual righteousness. 



2 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


Mr. Ben Lithgow and Mr. Alcott Lithgow, brothers, 
and sons of Alcott Lithgow senior, who had retired, 
carried on the largest dry goods trade, with general 
branches that nearly made their place a department 
store, in the whole region of Grand River Valley in — 
never mind the state. They had associated with them- 
selves a younger man, in fact a very young man, who 
had shown superior abilities in the knowledge and hand- 
ling of fabrics. His name was Theodore Mack, and he 
also was an active member of the First Church. 

The subject of Christ before Pilate happened to 
come in course before the Sunday-school of the First 
Church, and the same subject was treated in the pastor's 
evening address. Mr. Ben Lithgow was the sagacious 
and successful teacher of the largest class of young men 
in that large school. 

“Pilate was not only a coward," said he to his class 
that Sunday, “but he was dreadfully short-sighted. As 
a mere matter of policy he could not afford to yield to 
the clamor of that mob. As a mere matter of policy 
it could not pay him to deliver Jesus up." 

Mr. Markham, the young principal of the high 
school, suggested that he ought to have done right in 
the case, policy or no policy. 


BY LYING. 


3 


“Very true/’ said Ben, “but it would be worth a 
good deal to us all if we could learn that it pays to do 
exactly right. It would have been worth more to the 
stability of Pilate’s reign if he had sent for a company 
of soldiers, and if he had said to that mob, ‘As this 
man has done nothing he shall be protected. Touch 
him at your peril.’ A lesson of that kind, not com- 
pliance, is what every mob needs. It was the right 
thing to do, and therefore it would have worked well.” 

“I am afraid your principle will not be very soon 
applied to politics and business,” answered the prin- 
cipal. 

And curiously enough he remembered at that very 
moment certain advertisements bearing the Lithgow 
name that he had himself tested to his cost, by the 
purchase of some of the offered bargains. But he did 
not dwell on the thought. He, with the whole com- 
munity, had learned to discount advertisements. 

“Pilate thought he could lay the blame on the 
Jews,” said one of the class. 

“Yes, and that,” replied Ben, “was the most foolish 
and wicked part of the proceeding. And it is an at- 
tempt that has persisted. The most difficult thing in 
public affairs to-day is to fix responsibility. The mayor 


4 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


lays the wrong to the chief of police, the chief to the 
courts, the courts to the peculiarity of the law. Among 
them all, official wickedness gets its chance and escapes 
consequences” 

Again the principal thought of the great establish- 
ment on the corner of St. George and Cedar Street. 
He wondered if Ben would apply his reasoning about 
Pilate to the store and its affairs. 

But Ben Lithgow was quite sincere in his views 
about Pilate, and was aware of the reputation which he 
had to maintain in Jacques City as a man of Christian 
integrity. Nevertheless he was sharp enough to be a 
casuist, and would have found several arguments at 
hand, had anyone actually challenged him to apply his 
own reasoning to the conduct of his store. 

On that same Sunday Mr. Theodore Mack taught 
the Pilate lesson to his class of boys. The course of 
the discussion with them ran to the question of lying. 
One of his class asked if it would ever be right to lie. 

“It would never be right,” answered Mr. Mack. 
“But it might sometimes be excusable. As, for in- 
stance, if it were to save a man’s life. Nothing would 
make it right, however.” 

“Doesn’t one have to lie in business sometimes? 


BY LYING. 


5 


Fve heard that you can't do business without lying a 
little,” said another. 

“I don’t do business on that principle myself/’ said 
Mack, with a flush in his face. 

“Do you believe a man can succeed in business and 
always tell the exact truth?” 

“If a Christian man doesn’t tell the exact truth, 
what shall we say of his Christianity? To lie merely 
to make one’s money is to act Pilate over again. He 
did wrong because he thought it was to his advantage.” 

“Don’t most business men lie about their goods?” 
asked another. 

“Some do. I should be sorry to think they are the 
majority,” answered Mack. “As for me, if I can’t get 
money without lying I will never get money. But I 
don’t believe lying ever pays in the end. It doesn’t if 
God rules the world.” 

This Pilate lesson had a singularly earnest consid- 
eration that day among the members of the First 
Church. Mr. Ben Lithgow remarked to Rev. Donald 
Foss, the pastor, as they walked home from the evening 
service, that the lesson had afforded a splendid oppor- 
tunity to bring out the duty of professing Christians 
in matters of truth and courage. Abstractly, he re- 


6 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


joiced in this occasion. He knew he had ability in 
teaching, and felt sure he had rendered good service 
to the cause of righteousness. 

It was curious, in view of all this, that his very 
first experience on Monday at the store should he by 
way of an application of his teaching in a very practical 
and unexpected form. 

The cold season was going by, and there was 
an opportunity in the trade to offer a stock of cloaks 
at a mark-down price. They were advertised in the 
taking manner that had made the announcements of 
Lithgow Bros. & Mack notable in the region. On 
this particular Monday, quite early, Mrs. Pendleton, 
who was a very good customer, came to the great store 
to get a first choice of the bargain. Young Paul 
Carroll happened to be the clerk that undertook to show 
her the cloaks. Carroll was president of the Endeavor 
Society of the First Church. He was known by Mr. 
Mack especially as a young man of promise in the 
store and in the community. Without any pretensions 
to smartness, he had a faculty of attention and of 
memory that, with his Christian fidelity to duty, made 
him a valuable clerk in the store. 

"I like this one,” said Mrs. Pendleton, surveying 


BY LYING. 


7 


herself in one of the cloaks. “How can you sell them 
at the price though? I am almost afraid to buy.” 

“The cloak is quite worth the money, madam,” said 
Carroll without hesitation. 

“It is made of whole skins, of course? I am par- 
ticular about that. That is what the paper said.” 

“I cannot guaranty that,” said Carroll, flushing 
hotly. 

“But the advertisement says so. Lithgow Bros. & 
Mack wouldn’t say so if it weren’t so, would they?” 

Carroll bit his lip and remained silent. Then re- 
calling himself as he saw that his customer was taking 
off the cloak, he took another cloak from the pile and 
said, 

“This cloak is of whole skins. I can guaranty it.” 

“But it is inferior in every way. I will think about 
it a little longer.” 

Carroll saw that she was miffed, and knew that his 
truth -telling, or the difference between that and the 
advertisement, had spoiled a trade. But he knew that 
he had done exactly right. 

Mrs. Pendleton going out was intercepted by Ben, 
who greeted her with the greatest cordiality. He had 
seen her at the cloak stand, and so he said pleasantly, 


8 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


“I trust you were able to be suited. We lose money 
on the cloaks but it is your gain.” 

Mrs. Pendleton, who was diplomatic and a well-bred 
woman, answered that she would think about the cloaks, 
and decide a little later. Ben knew, however, with 
the fine instinct of the trader that something had 
happened. He sauntered over to the cloak stand. 

“I noticed Mrs. Pendleton trying on a cloak,” he 
said to Carroll, concealing everything but a cheerful 
manner as he spoke. 

“She didn’t buy,” said Carroll. “Said she might 
call again.” 

“Perhaps she didn’t find a size,” suggested Ben. 
He had a delicate, careful way of approach to every- 
body and Carroll could not tell that he was on a scent 
for the cause of the trouble. 

“She found the right size, but she wanted a whole- 
skin cloak of this fur. There were none left.” 

“But this is whole skin,” said Ben with confidence. 
Now Ben knew it wasn’t, but he was resolved not to 
be put in the wrong by his clerk. He surmised in- 
stantly what had happened. Mrs. Pendleton had tested 
the advertisement and found it false. Carroll had also 
found out its character. But Ben was not disposed to 


BY LYING. 


9 


swerve from a business course that no one had ever 
questioned. 

Carroll said nothing, but cast down his eyes. 

“If any cloaks have gotten among the lot that are 
not whole skin,” went on Ben, “it may have been by 
some mistake. But this is whole. It has Shane’s mark, 
too. However — ” He said no more but went smiling 
away. Carroll had not the least suspicion that he was 
angry. Ben was an adept in concealing his emotions. 

Nevertheless, the next morning Carroll was needed 
in the furniture department. He thought it rather 
queer to be transferred. He felt certain that no one 
else among the clerks knew so much about fur cloaks 
as he did. 

About Wednesday Ben incidentally remarked to 
Carroll that the trade was so dull the firm finally felt 
the need of curtailing somewhere. The next day this 
suggestion was repeated in a varied form. There was 
also a hint that it would be possible to re-organize the 
departments so as to get along with a smaller number 
of employes. Then, when pay-day came on Saturday 
there was a polite little note, regretting that the state 
of the trade compelled the firm to reduce the force, 
and giving him notice that after another week they 


10 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


would be obliged to dispense with his valuable services. 

And so naturally and so skillfully was all this done 
that Carroll could not find it in his heart to believe 
that the cloak incident had the least thing to do with it. 
Nevertheless, it was true that by some different dis- 
tribution of the help, Lithgow Bros. & Mack were 
able to supply Carroll’s place in such a manner that 
none of the friends he had in the store could really 
tell that there had been no reduction of the force 
after all. 

More than this: Mrs. Pendleton being also a 
member of the First Church, was on good terms socially 
with the members of the firm. Ben was wise enough 
to be able to remedy the blunder — as he called it — of 
his clerk. He was successful enough in his explana- 
tions to induce the lady to return to the store where, 
unknown to herself, she got a much better bargain than 
she had refused. Ben had the business shrewdness 
to sell her the kind of cloak he had advertised, at the 
same price he had fixed for the pieced furs, and she got 
the impression, without the necessity of telling any 
actual lies, that the clerk had been mistaken, and that 
all of the offered cloaks were equally valuable. It was 
a slight loss to the firm, but it kept a good customer. 


BY LYING. 


11 


“What has become of Paul Carroll ?” asked Mr. 
Mack, missing at length the well-liked clerk from the 
store. 

“Paul made a little slip and we laid him off,” said 
Ben. 

“I don’t remember to have been consulted,” said 
Mack, a trifle sharply. “What did he do, anyhow?” 

“Spoiled a trade, nearly lost us a good customer — 
Mrs. Pendleton.” 

Mack inquired into the matter closely. But Ben 
was shrewd enough to put the best construction on his 
own action. He had more than once been made un- 
comfortable by Mack’s insistence in wishing to know 
all the little details of transactions in the firm. 

Mack was not satisfied and went to Carroll. Carroll 
told him about the cloak incident, but added that he 
was not discharged for that matter so far as he knew. 

Mr. Mack therefore went off, and on his own account 
went through the whole question of the cloak sale. 
Summing up all the things he learned, he began to be 
troubled and even startled. He found not less than 
seven distinct falsehoods in the advertisement. They 
were veiled, they were the common falsehoods of trade. 
Few of them would ever be detected. Some of them 


12 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


were of a kind that, being so common, deceive no one 
very much. But they were falsehoods. Mr. Mack 
went home to his young wife, whom he found rocking 
to sleep their first baby. 

“Now Theo, what, pray, are you scowling about? 
Look into this cradle now and smile, you sober man!” 

she said, kissing him as he came in. 

* 

His little frown vanished as he felt the warmth of 
the cheery place. But it came back a little later. 

“It is the business, of course, dear,” he said when 
she again charged him with the frown. “I have been 
thinking, and I think I shall do more than think.” 

“The first thing though is to tell me,” said the little 
mother softly. “Speak it out now, and see if I don’t 
get the frown out of your forehead, quick.” 

“I will, of course. Very well, I am thinking that 
I do not intend To get my money by lying. And I 
think that is settled.” 

“Who ever charged you with that now?” said Mrs. 
Mack, half ready to cry. 

“Oh, no one; no one! I didn’t mean to say that, 
either. Let me tell you.” He went on and told her 
the whole story. 

“And Paul Carroll has been turned off, without the 


BY LYING. 


13 


least doubt, because he didn’t lie about that cloak. Ben 
doesn’t mean to do wrong, very likely; but he does do 
wrong. It is in the business; and so many do it and 
have done it so long that he sees no wrong in it, I 
presume. But I am a disciple — a poor one, I know — 
of my Master; and I am bound I will do my business 
with Him in company or I won’t do business at all. I 
know Ben. He won’t take advice from me about 
moral questions. He is very skillful and brainy, but 
he is also very proud. If I tell him what I think of 
this way of advertising, he will be as pleasant about 
it as he always is, but he will see to it that I don’t get 
any opportunity to work a reform at the store. He 
and Alcott are agreed, and they have the capital. So, 
now, you see the conclusion. If I want to be honest I 
have to get out.” 

“Out of the firm? 0 Theo!” 

She did cry then. She believed — they both believed 
— that Mack’s one great chance for future success lay 
in the connection he had made with the prosperous 
firm of Lithgow Bros. 


CHAPTER II. 


HE ISN’T HONEST. 

BOUT the time of the incident that we have 
related the plans of pastor Foss were com- 
pleted for holding a succession of meetings 
by way of a late winter campaign. Owing to some 
disinclination of certain useful members to engage 
in a revival, the movement was not called by that 
name. Nevertheless the gentleman whom the pastor 
called in to assist, had a distinct desire to bring 
about a revival, of the sort that he plainly defined 
in his first address on Sunday morning. Before 
his coming Mr. Foss had carefully looked up his 
work in other places. He was reputed to be a man 
of great practical sagacity, and had been successful. 
His name was Ray — Rev. Milton Ray — and he was a 
smallish, thin-faced, pleasant-looking gentleman, with- 
out anything of the clerical air, and lacking entirely 
in any of the marks of a professional evangelist. 

Mr. Ray came a week in advance of the meetings. 



HE ISN'T HONEST. 


15 


He visited pastor Foss, and spent the entire week in 
making himself familiar with the conditions of the 
church. 

The first man he heard about and the member he 
heard about most, during this preliminary survey, was 
Ben Lithgow. Ben had entered into the pastor’s plans 
from the first, and had been upon the special committee 
to correspond with Mr. Ray. He invited the visiting 
clergyman to his house, and talked over with him all the 
affairs of the church. He was in frequent conference 
with both the ministers at the pastor’s house. With 
his brother Alcott, who was by no means so able as 
Ben but who held official position also in the church, 
Ben used his great influence to induce the young men 
in the town, and especially those within easy touch 
with the church, to plan to attend the special meetings. 

In the midst of all this planning Ben was disturbed 
by the announcement of the junior partner that he had 
decided to withdraw from the firm. Mr. Mack having 
prepared himself to do the thing, was ready, if he had 
been asked, to state his reasons. But Ben and Alcott 
both had known for some time that Mack was not in 
sympathy with some of their business methods, and 
though the decision of Mr. Mack to retire was unex- 


16 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


pected, Ben did not press him for a reason. The 
business relation was so definite that such a step had 
been provided for in the partnership contract, and Mr. 
Mack was able to receive his capital and current 
proceeds without the necessity of making an inventory. 

The dissolution was announced on the very day on 
which Mr. Bay’s meetings were to begin. Thus far 
Mr. Bay had scarcely heard of Mr. Mack. But Mr. 
Mack, too, was in his place that evening in the great 
vestry of the First Church. There had been a good 
canvass of the members, and the meetings began with 
a very large attendance. After the first meeting some 
of the influential members of the church remained to 
meet Mr. Bay. 

“Where is Brother Lithgow?” asked the pastor when 
they had come together in the study. 

No one seemed to know. Perhaps he had not been 
informed. Perhaps he had been obliged to go home 
early. Mr. Foss felt that it was a distinct loss to the 
conference. 

“His judgment is excellent in these matters,” he 
remarked thoughtfully. “And he is unusually inter- 
ested.” 

“It is but a short distance. I’ll go and see if he 


HE ISN'T HONEST . 


17 


can come back,” suggested Deacon Park, about to 
start off. 

“That will hardly be necessary,” said Mr. Ray with 
some decision in his manner. “I only wished to have 
a little talk, that any one of you can convey to Brother 
Lithgow if necessary.” 

Pastor Foss wondered if Mr. Ray appreciated the 
influence and good judgment of Mr. Lithgow. 

“He will be ready to co-operate in anything we wish 
to carry out, I am sure,” said the pastor, yielding the 
point. “But I wish he had stayed. I know he is ready 
to organize the young men of his class and others for 
aggressive work.” 

“As to that, I suggest that we are not quite ready 
yet. We shall have to tarry in Jerusalem a little longer. 
Things almost organize themselves when the Spirit falls 
on men. My judgment is that we would better do our 
work for some days yet in the church. Perhaps the 
world will be coming here without much urgency, 
if we in the church get at this business in the 
right way.” 

“If we do no going out at all,” said Mr. Mack, who 
had ventured to remain to the conference, “such 
preaching as we listened to this evening will do us all 


18 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


good. It did bear a little hard on the sins of the 
church, I admit, but I believe it was the truth.” 

“If we don’t have too much of it,” interpolated 
Deacon Park. 

“I think I shall be able to tell when we are ready 
to go out and invite the people to the meetings. Mean- 
while the best revival we can experience will be in the 
church, I am sure,” said Mr. Ray. “I see some things 
in the way already, and they must be removed before 
we shall be able to reach sinners outside.” 

Mr. Ray talked more, but he was careful not to tell 
what these things were that he believed to be in the 
way. He insisted, however, that the invitations to come 
to the meeting on the next evening should be limited 
to the membership of the church. If others came in 
they would be welcome, but there was to be no concerted 
effort as yet to bring in the unconverted masses of 
Jacques City. 

“He may be right,” said Mr. Foss to Deacon Park 
as they parted that night, “But I have some idea the 
church would be stirred up quicker by filling up the 
meetings with as many sinners as we can induce to 
come.” 

“Not if he is going to dress us all down like that 


HE ISN’T HONEST. 


19 


for a week. That better be done in private/’ said the 
deacon with a laugh. 

No one ever knew the real reason for the absence of 
Ben Lithgow from that conference. His first impres- 
sion on hearing Mr. Ray had been a disappointment. 
He had hoped to hear from the ideas that he had 
himself advanced regarding the special meetings. He 
had not been able to endorse the evangelist’s plain 
speech about church members. But in the course of 
the evening the general tenor of the evangelist’s talk, 
more than any particular thing he had said, began to 
make Mr. Lithgow feel uncomfortable. It seemed 
evident that Mr. Ray did not mean to utilize at present 
the plans that Mr. Lithgow had suggested. In his 
deeper consciousness Ben felt some half-conscious 
antagonism. It might not have arisen from Mr. Ray’s 
failure to carry out his plans, but this probably helped. 
To himself he thought all the way home that the 
evangelist promised to prove an impracticable and over- 
radical teacher. Radicalism in any direction did not 
approve itself to Ben. He held sagacious theories of 
expediency, and believed that he was well acquainted 
with the wise ways of manipulating men. And he was 
sure to rate Mr. Ray down if he should prove unskillful 


20 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


in working all the policies and all the machinery of the 
occasion. 

But pastor Foss learned more about Mr. Ray and 
his methods the next morning, and became disturbed 
about the prospect. The evangelist called early and 
went at the matter at once. 

“I recognize your office here as pastor, Brother 
Foss,” said Mr. Ray with a pleasant smile. “I want 
to work to your approval and have your co-operation. 
That has all been said before, you know. But I have 
found out some obstacles, and we must remove them 
if I am to go on. I had a good purpose in taking a 
week in Jacques City first. I have been looking 
around.” 

“I hope there is nothing insuperable in the way, 
surely,” said Mr. Foss. “Tell me frankly, if you please, 
what is on your mind.” 

“Brother Lithgow,” said Mr. Ray. “He and some 
others.” 

“What? You don’t mean — that Brother Lithgow — 
is an obstacle?” 

“Yes. The largest one. There are others. But he 
is the chief, because he has a certain kind of influence. 
We shall not have any revival unless he keeps out of it.” 


HE ISN'T HONEST. 


21 


“Aren’t you making a mistake? He is one of the 
consecrated and intelligent men of the First Church. 
We should be lost without him.” 

“I understand how you feel about Brother Lithgow. 
But, pardon me, he isn’t the man to lead in this work.” 

Pastor Foss, red in the face, began to feel that he 
had made a mistake in Mr. Ray. He had jumped to 
conclusions and had misjudged the ablest helper in the 
church. Unless he could he disabused of this idea the 
work would be in danger. 

“I think you must have been somehow wrongly 
informed. Who has questioned Brother Lithgow’s 
ability, or judgment, perhaps?” 

“'No one but myself so far as I know. Nevertheless 
I have no doubts about the matter. I suggest if there 
is to be any organizing of the young men for this work 
he ought to leave that to me, and to those whom I will 
pick out. I have two in my mind already.” 

“But that is Brother Lithgow’s especial gift. He 
has more influence among the young men of the city 
than almost any other man.” 

“That is probably true — influence of a sort. Never- 
theless, I cannot use him. He must be made to feel 
that, so far as active work is concerned, he is to remain 


22 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


quiet in this campaign. I look to you to aid in this 
matter. For one thing, I shall offend him and make 
him angry before long, if he comes to the meetings. 
He will not show it to anybody, but if he remains at 
the front he will not long work in harmony with me.” 

“I am sure you misjudge Brother Lithgow. He 
works smoothly with everybody. He is the most 
peaceable man in the whole congregation. I know 
him well, Brother Ray. Why do you say these things?” 

“It is my business to find out men. If Mr. Lithgow 
were a common sinner, outside the church, he is the 
very first man I would attempt to convert. If I suc- 
ceeded I should then have a good many more. But 
being inside, and ready to he thrown at me, so to speak, 
I can’t use him. Why not? Well, first, he isn’t 
honest.” 

“That is going too far, Brother Ray. It won’t do 
to say that in Jacques City. He stands among the 
highest in his integrity.” 

“Of course I say nothing at all outside this study, 
Mr. Foss. But here I have been asked to speak frankly, 
and I do. And being here, I repeat that Mr. Lithgow 
is not honest. He is a diplomat, a man of high ideals 
in many directions, a man who knows the finest dis- 


HE ISN’T HONEST. 


23 


tinctions in ethics better than a Jesuit, and a man who 
would find words and find modes in which to serve his 
own defense. I even think he has character enough to 
take a hurt to his pride, and repent, and do better. 
This is the test to which I would like to put him. But 
it will take more than a few weeks. He is a man 
capable of sophistries that deceive even himself. But 
I do not think it best to let the church pause and this 
work fail just now in order to attack and master this 
one man. But it either comes to that, or to driving 
him out of the work for the present. He may even 
leave this church as a result, if his better nature does 
not conquer.” 

“Leave this church! Never. If it comes to that I 
w r oald sooner stop now. I do not — pardon me — I do 
not credit what you are saying. Mr. Lithgow, if he 
has a fault, would be the first one to welcome the 
censure of a friend about it. Have you been to him?” 

“You are mistaken, Mr. Foss. He would thank me, 
with a tear in his eye, and he would be full of arguments 
to show that I was mistaken, while thanking me for 
my interest. He would take me by the hand when I 
should leave him, and assure me that I had tried to 
render him a service; but he would be more than likely 


24 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


to make up his mind, under his smile, that I am a 
meddler and a radical fellow generally, whom it was 
a mistake to call here; and he would go on with his 
dishonesty afterward.” 

“What dishonesty? Why have you thought him 
dishonest? It is the first intimation I ever heard of 
the kind anywhere.” 

“Then I suggest that you do not keep your ear to 
the ground. Pray, do you keep run of the business 
methods of the house of Lithgow Brothers? What does 
the outside world think of them?” 

“They rate the highest in the town.” 

“That won’t do. Do they do business on the same 
plan with the Rosenburg firm?” 

“I suppose so. The great stores have methods much 
alike.” 

“Yes. Rosenburg is a Hebrew. He is, besides, a 
man without great business scruples beyond maintaining 
a degree of reputation in the city. Very well. The 
advertising methods and the selling methods of the 
two firms are, as you say, much alike. That is to say, 
they scheme day and night to beat each other. The 
Jew has no scruples about using a page in the Sunday 
paper to advertise his wares; so Lithgow Brothers must 


EE ISN'T HONEST. 


25 


do likewise or lose, they think, in the competition. The 
Jew lies about his wares as much as the case will bear, 
and the Christian goes a little farther in order to get 
the trade. And the head of the Christian firm is Mr. 
Lithgow. He has either not developed a conscience on 
the subject of his advertising, or he has reasoned himself 
out of its influence. Now such a man may have all the 
reputation and substance of a high life in every other 
direction, but that one fly will corrupt the whole 
ointment. Young men know all about these tricks of 
the trade. They know that Mr. Lithgow uses them. 
They know what I have found out on two or three visits 
to his store; that there are fabrics advertised there as 
all wool that under the glass show a distinct thread of 
cotton twisted in the spinning with a weolen sliver in 
the warp. Now it is absolutely certain that Mr. 
Lithgow never bought that cotton thread ignorantly. 
He knows more about fabrics than any other man in 
the whole state. He knows that certain goods that 
one of his clerks showed me, marked at a certain number 
of picks to the inch, is four picks coarser under the 
glass when you count them. He knows that some of 
the gloves in his boxes marked “a Paris” and sold for 
imported, are made in Fourteenth Street, New York; 


26 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


and that certain buttons bearing a foreign mark are 
made in Medford, Massachusetts. He knows that every 
clerk in his store, every day of the year, does more or 
less lying, some of it mild, and some of it done in entire 
ignorance, but lying still. How do you suppose others 
do not know this, too? Very well. What influence for 
upright righteousness, in the long run, can Mr. Lithgow 
have with young men? He might have some, with 
those who do not think of these things, but I could not 
ask the blessing of my God on this work if I put it or 
any branch of it into his hands. I have been here but 
a week and you have lived here three years; but, pardon 
me, I think nevertheless that I know considerably more 
about some of your people than you do. And, privately, 
I will tell you that the things I have been whispering 
to you constitute the reason for Mr. Mack’s withdrawal 
from the Lithgow firm. I learned that, too. Brother 
Mack, so far as I can tell, now, is the man to lead the 
young men when we begin aggressive work — if we do.” 

During this quiet, serious but decisive talk, pastor 
Foss sat staring in dead astonishment at the evangelist. 
He began to have more respect for this quiet, practical 
man from that moment. 

“I suppose it is common to all the business houses 


EE ISN'T HONEST. 


27 


to do such things,” he said after a pause. "I have never 
given the thought to it that I ought, I suppose. But 
if these things are so — well — what ought to be done? 
Brother Lithgow is one of the leaders in the church. 
It will not be easy to shelve him.” 

“I think it may be very easy. That does not trouble 
me. But what he may do troubles me. He influences 
the church. The outside world I could manage all 
right. But if he drops out we shall have difficulty in 
keeping the united interest of the others.” 

“What do you propose, then?” 

“To go ahead and do the work with those who 
will do it. I have counted up. I can tell who will 
stand by.” 

“The deacons, of course.’* 

“Not one of them. But they will be liable to come 
in later, after the thing succeeds. Deacon Park is in 
the same boat with Mr. Lithgow. He is in trade, and 
he competes with the weapons of the sinner. I have 
been sampling his goods also.” 

“And these men are the lights of the church, too !” 

“Exactly. But there is no reason for discourage- 
ment in that. It merely means that they haven’t been 
toned up to the key of a higher life. They will all come 


28 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


up a little later. The commercial standard is low and 
they go down to it. It is coming to be higher, and 
they will all be glad to tone up with it. But who is 
to do the toning up, Brother Foss. The Jew? That 
isn’t our hope. We can’t expect commercial righteous- 
ness unless these men who, like Brother Lithgow, 
belong inside the church of Christ, make the beginning.” 

“But is it necessary to compel our meetings, and the 
success of this movement, to wait on such issues? Isn’t 
it better to go as far as we can, and use Brother 
Lithgow’s influence for whatever he is fitted to do?” 

“That is the matter with the church,” said Mr. Ray 
with energy. “It has lost somewhat the power for 
revivals, because of that course. So long as God left 
us blind to these things — The former times of this 
ignorance God overlooked’ — perhaps we could go on 
working with men who were not altogether straight in 
their business. But I tell you a new light is come, and 
the world itself is thinking new thoughts about business 
methods. We may not have any revival, Brother Foss, 
hut we may do more good by these meetings than we 
should if we had one.” 

But Mr. Foss felt, notwithstanding his conviction 
that the evangelist was right, that the plans he had laid 


HE ISN'T HONEST. 


29 


for these meetings were already far on the way to defeat. 

"Brother Mack, of whom yon speak,” he said in 
a somewhat discouraged tone, "is a good young man, 
hut he has very little influence. He is, in fact, regarded 
as somewhat visionary in his ideas about church matters. 
How that he is out of the Lithgow house he stands for 
less than before in the community. To drop Mr. 
Lithgow and attempt to work through Mr. Mack — well, 
it looks to me like a doubtful generalship. But I will 
think over what you have said and see you again to- 
morrow.” 

Mr. Bay went off with a smile on his face, thinking 
that perhaps the way was a little clearer to the ends he 
had in view. 

"At the house of God — it must begin there,” he said 
to himself as he walked down the street. 


CHAPTER III. 


MR. RAY’S INSTANCES. 


fJTF 


was not long before it began to be whispered 
by the members of the First Church that 
their special meetings were not succeeding as 
they had hoped. And one said to another that 
Mr. Lithgow seemed to have lost his interest in 
them all at once. The church members were urged 
to come faithfully to the services, and both Mr. 
Ray and the pastor carefully explained that it was 
intended to confine the attendance chiefly to the 
people of the church for the first week at least. 
Private meetings for prayer were held every afternoon 
after the first day, to which personal invitation was 
extended to such persons as the evangelist named. 

Pastor Foss, who seemed to have the alternative 
left him of adopting the methods of Mr. Ray or 
abandoning the meetings, had reluctantly fallen in with 
these methods. The effort to bring out the church 
membership was fairly successful, and the representative 


MR. RATS INSTANCES. 


31 


men and women of the church were in their places. 
After two or three nights of Mr. Ray’s peculiar preach- 
ing curiosity began to be stirred and a larger number 
came. By Friday evening the large vestry was well 
filled. 

Ben Lithgow was present every night, being wise 
enough not to show any resentment he might have felt 
at being so abruptly dropped out of the counsels of the 
evangelist. But what he heard rankled deeply in his 
mind. Instead of the ordinary appeals to the church 
in behalf of a spiritual life, and exhortations to pray 
for the meetings and bring in the sinners to be con- 
verted, he heard a radically different story. He felt 
surer every night that he ought to rate the evangelist 
down as a radical, and also as a man without deep 
spiritual culture. “Spiritual culture” was a favorite 
idea with Mr. Lithgow. When he heard incidentally 
that it was Mr. Ray’s idea to work first with the church, 
he commended it, and remarked that the church needed 
toning up in spiritual things. But he hardly thought 
Mr. Ray was the kind of a man to accomplish this work, 
though he was discreet enough to refrain from saying so. 
But as the week went on he could not forbear from 
gently expressing his wonder here and there at the 


32 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


methods of the meetings. They seemed like anything 
but revival meetings. For one thing, there was in them 
neither prayer nor song. The evangelist, coming in 
every night at precisely a quarter before eight, went 
into the desk and began reading and expounding the 
Scriptures. From that on for an hour, the applications 
of the Word to the life of the Christian and to the 
offices and opportunities of the church were made in 
a most unpretentious fashion, in a voice seldom raised 
above the conversation pitch. But, strangely enough, 
these talks began to tell on those who listened. There 
was a reserve of intensity and a directness of sincerity 
in Mr. Ray that could not be escaped. Nevertheless, 
what he said did not commend itself to the judgment of 
Mr. Foss, nor to a considerable number of the most 
influential members of the church. The pastor said it 
was true enough but probably impracticable — and Mr. 
Ray knew very well what the pastor’s judgment was. 

“These outside matters are not very well intended 
to promote a spiritual revival,” declared Deacon Park. 
“I wonder what the man is up to anyway. Does he 
expect to make saints of all of us before he does 
anything else?” 

“If he can do us good perhaps that is as well as to 


MR. RATS INSTANCES. 


33 


do some other people good/’ said old Brother Watson, 
a poor hut wise old Christian who overheard this re- 
mark. Brother Watson was human enough to he glad 
somebody was getting hit. 

And it was apparent before this week was gone 
that the ones who felt that they were "getting hit” 
were the very ones who had been most instrumental 
among the laymen in inaugurating the movement. But 
especially had Mr. Ray enunciated Christian principles 
of business and of the personal relations of life. He 
had not intended merely to ff hit” somebody. But he 
had his mission and his idea and he was faithful to them. 

On Friday evening an event that had transpired in 
Jacques City and that had been made public that very 
day, furnished Mr. Ray with an illustration that he had 
not expected to have. Mr. Teller, one of the heaviest 
merchants in the city and a manufacturer, announced 
himself insolvent. It was found that he had taken ad- 
vantage of all the legal privileges of a bankrupt, and so 
effectually that his creditors were unable to realize any- 
thing considerable from his assets. It was evident that 
Mr. Teller had failed to his own advantage, yet nothing 
positively illegal could he discovered. True, his repu- 
tation in Jacques City would be something less, but he 


34 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


had never been rated as a man of extremely high prin- 
ciples. 

Now the Christian men of the First Church, convers- 
ing about the matter before the evening meeting, were 
well nigh unanimous in accepting Mr. Lithgow’s conclu- 
sion, which he argued with all appearance of charity 
but very cogently, that Mr. Teller was a logical result 
of his own un-Christian course. He had never been 
inside the churches, he was notoriously worldly and 
atheistic, and not much better might be expected of 
such a man. 

On this Friday evening Mr. Ray had prepared to 
bring to an application quite direct the principles that 
he had been laying down in a somewhat general fashion 
all through the week. Mr. Lithgow was in his seat, 
well back, and feeling uncomfortable — he did not know 
exactly why. 

“I have been told that one of your merchants has 
failed,” began Mr. Ray abruptly, not as usual opening 
his Bible. “It is also said that his failure is not an 
unexpected event to himself. Every person in Jacques 
City will suffer as a consequence.” 

He paused, the place perfectly still, and looked over 
the room, and especially at the corner where Mr. Lith- 


MR. RATS INSTANCES. 


gow was sitting. Every one waited in intense interest 
for the quiet man to proceed. 

“ Those who impeach Mr. Teller’s honesty may for- 
get that he is the product and fruit of a commercial 
system. That system will pass away whenever the prin- 
ciples that I have been teaching here throughout this 
week take possession of the Church of Christ. The 
Church of Christ is God’s instrument for the world’s 
regeneration. She cannot regenerate commerce from its 
inequalities and falsehoods unless the commerce rep- 
resented by Christian merchants shall itself become 
honest and just.” 

This was getting towards close quarters. Mr. Ray 
relieved the strain a trifle by relating an incident in 
commercial life. Then he came back to his attack. 

“Christian men belonging to the Church of Christ 
do not always do business on Christian principles. 
More than this, they do not always do business honestly. 
The merchants of Jacques City are very scarce who 
could throw any stones at the man whose failure is 
being ascribed to over-sharp methods in this town to- 
day. Why? Because his methods are, and have been, 
the methods of the trade. The particular sins do not 
matter to this point so much. But I assert that Chris- 


36 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


tian men, men who are bearers of the church banner, 
men who stand high in her counsels, do not scruple to 
advertise in the papers that circulate on the Lord’s Day. 
There may he an honest difference of opinion about the 
ethics of that thing. But how can men who do that 
stand clear as examples of Sabbath keeping? That is 
a question for the conscience — is a question for you all 
to think about.” 

Mr. Lithgow very nearly rose up, as if to make an 
answer then and there, but restrained himself, and 
though red in the face he would not show to others his 
feelings by walking out as he was tempted to do. 

“Let it be answered, if you like, that the Sunday 
paper has come to stay — does the Christian defend it? 
And if he does not, who is responsible for it? How 
many such papers could live in Jacques City, without 
the advertising patronage of Christian men?” 

Mr. Ray had not intended to raise this question 
chiefly just then. It was only preliminary to getting 
their close attention to another question. He told an- 
other story about a certain Sunday newspaper and then 
went to a larger question. 

“But whatever difference there may be in our judg- 
ments about this matter that I have opened, there can 


MR. RATS INSTANCES. 


37 


be none at all about some other standards that seem 
to be set by Christians in business. Here is a leading 
and reputable magazine for instance, announcing a con- 
test of competition, whereby one may obtain a costly 
set of books. Nothing at all is said in the advertise- 
ment about the payment of money. But on sending for 
the particulars I learn that in order to enter this com- 
petition I am obliged to purchase another set of books 
almost as costly. That is a trick of the trade, the mer- 
chant will tell you. But the common man, thinking 
out problems from the standpoint of Christ’s ethical 
demands, understands that it is dishonest. No stand- 
ards of trade can justify it, in my eyes. Christ would 
not run a magazine that way, be very sure. And yet the 
publishers of this one axe leaders in Christian work. 

“One of the most prominent tradesmen in this coun- 
try advertises a great encyclopedia at a very low price. 
His advertisement states distinctly that it is new from 
cover to cover. In various ways it is announced as an 
original work, brought down to date. What now am 
I to think when I open it and find that it is made from 
the revised plates of a cyclopedia that has been on the 
market for more than twenty years? Yea, more, what 
am I to think when it is sold on an arrangement with 


38 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


one of the great denominational publishing houses? 
They doubtless are not responsible for that advertise- 
ment, but are they not responsible for permitting the 
arrangement to remain private while the public is thus 
cheated? And this merchant is a Sunday-school super- 
intendent and a prominent Christian. 

“What if you were to go inside the secrets of a great 
publishing house run by Christian men, and learn their 
methods. Here is one that advertises in all the maga- 
zines. In the advertisements the publisher is appar- 
ently made to say that a certain number of sets of a 
certain work have been ‘reserved’ for its readers at a 
special price and on special terms. But what if you 
were to find out that actually the only interest the pub- 
lisher of the magazine or paper has in the work is 
merely to print the advertisement at a specified rate. 
Suppose the advertiser has merely taken this way to 
seem to get the endorsement of the paper or magazine 
by the form of his advertisement and no such arrange- 
ment as the advertisement states has ever been made? 
How I assert that that kind of lie has been printed again 
and again in journals that are even professedly Christian. 

“Suppose I go into a man’s store and buy a garment. 
It is called all wool. I ask if it is all wool and get the 


MR. RATS INSTANCES. 


39 


satisfactory answer. Suppose I discover that it was so- 
called merely because that is the trade name for the 
fabric. Has any one lied? 

“Suppose a bankrupt stock of goods is advertised 
for sale and prices are quoted that tempt me to go and 
buy. Let us say even that I have received my money’s 
worth. But suppose it happens that I discover that the 
bankrupt stock consists of a few goods bought for the 
purpose of the clearance, and the remainder of goods 
that the merchant had left over and wants to close out. 
Suppose I am not cheated; nevertheless, has not that 
merchant lied?” 

And so on for some time Mr. Bay went on exposing 
some of the modern methods of business. $ot a move- 
ment meanwhile was made by the audience. They were 
hearing things that everybody knows are true, but now 
they were slowly set out against the white background 
of Christian truth. From the subtle and thorough ex- 
posure by instances of business methods, Mr. Bay then, 
suddenly pausing for an instant to give force to his 
contrast, began to hold up the demand of the world and 
of our Lord upon Christians. He pictured a converted 
young man set down in a modern store or a great busi- 
ness house where such things are done. He pictured 


40 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


Christ standing behind counters and desks laying down 
his eternal law of righteousness. And then with an 
apostrophe that made men weep, he called Christ out 
of his ancient history, and prayed him to look on all 
these things and say what his people ought to do, be- 
ginning at the house of God. 

And then almost before any one could be sure he 
was done he walked out and went home. He refused 
to see any one that night, and no man knew what hap- 
pened in his chamber, where he shut himself from hu- 
man eye and alone with his Maker. 

But at the church the sensation was one that had 
never before been witnessed there. Mr. Lithgow was 
full of sarcasm, and wondered if “the fellow” had ever 
been inside a business house. Deacon Park said openly 
that he was done with the meetings from that moment. 
And under this lead there were a good many who felt 
that the wind was blowing unfavorably, and that they 
ought to follow their leaders. 

Pastor Foss, in deep despair, went home early and 
left them talking there. 

But Mr. Mack, walking home with his wife, said 
thoughtfully: 

“This will be a revival sure enough, dear.” 

“If they donT pack him off to-morrow,” said Mrs. 
Mack dubiously. 


CHAPTER IV. 


MRS. PENDLETON’S EXPERIMENT. 

HEN the meetings were resumed on Sunday 
and Monday there was a noticeable absence 
of the leading members. They had talked 
over the matter continuously, and the conservative and 
evidently reasonable counsel of Mr. Lithgow, Deacon 
Park and others whom they influenced, turned the scale 
against Mr. Ray and his methods. They went to the 
pastor of course and argued the case. Pastor Foss, 
between two fires and afraid that the meetings would 
divide the church, was equally afraid to discontinue 
them for the same reason. He urged the brethren to 
stand by and give the matter further trial, but his plea 
was unsuccessful. 

Nevertheless the report of the talk on Friday evening 
had crept abroad in the town, and the evident excite- 
ment into which it had thrown the membership con- 
tributed to bring in enough outsiders to fill the places 
made vacant by the church brethren. Mr. Ray had ex- 



42 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


pected this. He had informed Pastor Foss that the 
ground was now cleared, so that they might go ahead 
and try to win the unconverted by a different sort of 
preaching. This was attempted and there was a degree 
of success. But the antagonism of so many church 
members prevented any marked success and the meet- 
ings closed after two weeks more of steady effort on Mr. 
Bay’s part. He declared before he went that it had 
been apparent to him from the first that no extensive 
revival would occur, as the church itself was not in a 
condition to take care of the fruits, and that his success 
and the success of the movement would not be seen in 
any immediate additions to the membership. 

“Nevertheless,” he said during his closing address, 
“I have a profound conviction that a large and mighty 
work has been wrought here that will affect the life of 
this church for years to come.” 

Mr. Bay went home, or to some other field, and the 
influential portion of the First Church settled down to 
the habit of speaking of the effort as an abortive one, 
and of Mr. Bay as a well-meaning man who evidently 
was not well-calculated for the kind of work the church 
needed to have done. 

“What do you thing now of the revival, Theodore?” 


MRS. PENDLETON’S EXPERIMENT. 


43 


asked Mrs. Mack as they prepared for the morning serv- 
ice on the Sunday after Mr. Ray’s departure. 

“ I think we have had one, dear. It may not appear 
just yet, but the church will feel it later. So will the 
town, or I have not reckoned aright the power of truth.” 

“It was good, plain preaching anyhow. It ought to 
do good,” assented Mrs. Mack. 

“And it will. It has done good already. I have 
never thought as much about this matter of business 
honesty before; hut now my mind is set thinking that 
way I am finding out a good many things. For one 
thing, I am finding out why some of the young men 
in my class have not come into the church. There are 
the Ames hoys, for example. They both work for Dea- 
con Park in“his store. I drew it out of them after Mr. 
Ray gave that Friday night talk. They confessed that 
their reason was not a very good one, hut it amounted 
to the fact that they don’t think Deacon Park does busi- 
ness as a Christian man should. They told me some 
instances, too. I tell you, Mr. Ray hit the nail on the 
head. It seemed to me like a singular corroboration of 
my judgment in leaving the firm.” 

They went to church with this matter in their minds, 
and it was not entirely pleasing to them to hear a kind 


44 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


of apologetic sermon from Mr. Foss that seemed in- 
tended to take off the edge of the soreness in the hearts 
of certain of the brethren. 

Mr. Mack, meanwhile, had made arrangements to go 
into business on his own account. He had three thou- 
sand dollars, and could raise a little more on some real 
estate. He knew that he was risking it in a doubtful 
enterprise in the face of the wealthy and powerful house 
of the Lithgows, who would be likely to regard him as 
an especially obnoxious rival. His first move after de- 
ciding on this step was to engage Paul Carroll, whose 
value he knew, as his head clerk — his only clerk, in fact, 
for the present, so modest were his beginnings. 

When Mr. Mack’s first unpretentious announcement 
appeared in the city papers, Mr. Lithgow, who had been 
watching for this movement and who knew that it was 
coming, went over in the most friendly fashion to greet 
his new rival in the business. He thought he saw the 
end of this enterprise. He was long-headed and busi- 
ness-wise, and had outlived a good many small enter- 
prises in the years he had been in business. 

“I have been looking for you to branch out, Brother 
Mack,” he said cordially. “I came over to give you my 
congratulations and wish you every success. Be as- 


MRS. PENDLETON’S EXPERIMENT. 


45 


sured that the house of Lithgow will stand ready to 
render you every possible encouragement and assistance. 
We are brethren of the same church, and ought to he 
ready to help one another. I hope you will he free 
to let me know if I can he of any service.” 

Mr. Mack received this overture with a proper ex- 
pression of gratitude. He understood that he was not 
large enough to be regarded as a rival. He wondered 
how actual business competition would affect Lithgow’s 
view of the mutual duty of church members in busi- 
ness. 

Ben took a quick survey of the store without seem- 
ing to do so. With his experienced eye he saw that the 
stock had been chosen and arranged with the taste and 
judgment that he knew Mack possessed, and that it had, 
after all, no mean and scanty appearance. He also 
noticed Paul at the desk, whom he greeted with a 
studiously kind word, congratulating him on so soon 
finding congenial employment. Paul’s presence here 
made him considerably uncomfortable, however. He 
reflected that it would be inevitable that the cloak in- 
cident would be talked over between Mr. Mack and his 
former clerk. 

For two months there was but a small trade at the 


46 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


new store. It began to be said by the friends of Mr. 
Mack at the church and outside that it was a mistake 
for him to set up a business in the same town with the 
Lithgow house. It was also noted confidently that Mr. 
Mack did not seem to have any such faculty for at- 
tractive advertising as his great rivals displayed. His 
announcements were of the most matter-of-fact kind, 
but noticeable for entire absence of all superlatives. 
Mr. Mack actually avoided saying that anything he 
had was the best or the cheapest in the city. The 
announcements, however, kept on repeating the state- 
ment that every customer would be treated alike 
and was guaranteed a just and fair value for his 
money. 

One day in April Mr. Pendleton happened to want 
some gloves, and happened to think of them as he was 
passing Mr. Mack’s store. 

Mr. Pendleton was a large manufacturer of agri- 
cultural implements, a man of the world, though his 
wife belonged to the First Church, and he was very 
wealthy. 

“I think I will try Mack,” he said half aloud, and 
at once turned into the store. He remembered that 
Mr. Mack was a good and quiet fellow and trying to get 


MRS. PENDLETON' S EXPERIMENT. 


47 


on, and he had no objection to helping him to the ex- 
tent of the profit on a pair of gloves. 

He specified the kind he wanted. 

“These are right. I always buy this make. They 
are better than our American gloves. How is it that 
they can make better gloves over there, Mr. Mack?” 

“These are American,” said Mr. Mack smiling. 

“No — Paris. I know them well.” 

“They usually hear a Paris mark. I have taken 
off the mark from the box. You will find it inside the 
glove, though. I can’t very well take that out, as it 
is printed. But they are made in New York. I have 
been in the factory frequently.” 

“Imitation, do you mean?” 

“Just what I mean. But that doesn’t go here. 
They are the same kind you will get anywhere in town 
under the Paris brand.” 

“But I don’t want an imitation. I want the Paris 
article.” 

“I have some imported gloves — from Paris, too. 
But they are not so good as these and they cost a little 
more.” 

Mr. Pendleton looked at the gloves, and then at 
Mr. Mack, and then at the gloves again. 


48 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


“But why don’t you let the mark he? I should 
have felt altogether better if I had not found it out. 
Call them Paris gloves by all means, Mr. Mack.” He 
laughed and laid down the price of the gloves. 

“There are no false brands in this store,” said Mr. 
Mack, quietly. 

“It must be a sort of millennium place, then,” said 
Mr. Pendleton, and went out still laughing. 

The matter did not impress him greatly just then, 
and he was a man so constantly busy with his great 
manufactory that he did not think of this incident 
again for some days. 

One morning at the breakfast table, however, he 
happened to hear his wife remark that she was going 
to Lithgow’s to make some purchases during the 
morning. 

“Better go to Mack’s. He has a millennium store,” 
said Mr. Pendleton, a little jocosely. Then he narrated 
the incident of the gloves, and added, 

“Mack is a good fellow, though he will starve to 
death trying to be honest. It is an ideal, but it won’t 
work yet. World’s too blame sharp for that. How- 
ever, I learned a thing or two about gloves. I’ve laid 
my plans to play that thing off on Ben when I buy any 


MRS. PENDLETON'S EXPERIMENT. 


49 


more of his American-Paris gloves. Won’t I lay him 
out though? I’ll just tell him where the things are 
made.” 

Mr. Pendleton went to his office, and later Mrs. 
Pendleton, on the hint she had received, took a notion 
that she would really go and try the new store and 
patronize Mr. Mack a little as a sort of Christian duty. 

When she reached the little store she was a trifle 
surprised to find Paul Carroll behind the counter. In 
an instant his face reminded her of the cloak that she 
had bought of the Lithgow house and of the incident 
that happened there. 

Mrs. Pendleton was a diplomatic and shrewd woman, 
and spent some time making small purchases before 
she opened the matter on her mind. At length, having 
mentally organized her proceeding, she said, with an 
aspect of unconcern and very pleasantly, 

“I saw you last at Lithgow’s, Mr. Carroll. Let me 
see — didn’t you sell me a fur cloak there?” 

“No, madam. We did not happen to have any that 
suited you.” 

“True, I remember. You made some error, I think. 
I wanted a whole skin and — let me see — I think you 
said the one I wanted was pieced. But Mr. Lithgow 


50 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


thought you had committed an error. I went back 
and bought the cloak. It was the whole skin, don’t 
you know?” 

Paul turned a little red, but made no answer to 
this. Mrs. Pendleton appeared not to notice his 
embarrassment. She was recalling the remarkable 
Friday night address of Mr. Pay. She had been 
one of the members who had felt kindly towards 
the evangelist. 

“I hope,” she said with seeming carelessness, “that 
the matter did not prove serious to you. I ask because 
I ^ee you are out of the place. It was not long after 
that you got through there, I think?” 

“Mr. Lithgow stated that he was obliged to reduce 
the force,” said Paul. He would not mention to an- 
other his suspicion that had been well-nigh confirmed 
in his mind, that he had been discharged for refusing 
to misrepresent the cloak. 

“There is so much that is false in business,” said 
Mrs. Pendleton, “that I never know when I am get- 
ting cheated. How did you like Mr. Ray?” 

The transition was natural enough in her train of 
thought, and Paul followed it instantly because he 
too was thinking of the things Mr. Ray had said. 


MRS. PENDLETON’S EXPERIMENT. 


51 


“I was helped,” he said simply. “I think he was 
right, too.” 

“ About the business men, do you mean?” 

“About business — yes.” 

“But my husband says no store could be run on 
his idea a great while. Its competitors would soon 
ruin it.” 

“Perhaps so. But it ought not to be so. It 
wouldn’t, either, if Christians would think of it more, 
and refuse to trade with dishonest merchants.” 

“I have heard that Mr. Mack changes all his brands 
where they are not true. Does he, I wonder?” 

“Beg pardon — but I fear he would not like me to 
talk of his affairs that way. But I am willing to say 
that there are no falsehoods tolerated or practiced in 
this business.” 

“Perhaps you still think that was a pieced cloak?” 
said Mrs. Pendleton, abruptly returning to her point. 

“Yes, madam.” 

“But I have it at the house. I can show it to you 
if it would convince you.” 

“The one I showed you is almost certainly at 
Lithgows’ still. I saw it there the day I left, and 
it was then time to put them back in the regular 


52 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


cloak department. The sale was over for the sea- 
son, practically.” 

“And you think I bought a different one?” 

“Yes, madam.” 

“The price was the same.” 

“You are a good customer there, are you not?” 

“I suppose so. I buy a good deal.” 

“If you got a whole skin cloak — perhaps you did — 
for the cut price, then the house lost money through 
my statement to you. But they saved more by pleas- 
ing you, of course.” 

“Oh! I see. But Mr. Lithgow did not say that the 
cloak I bought was the same one you showed me. 
That was what we call a Trick of the trade’ then, doubt- 
less.” 

Paul was again silent. He had felt it his duty to 
state the facts in his own defense, but he would not 
pass any comment upon the transaction. He had never 
mentioned it to anybody except Mack. 

Mrs. Pendleton went away and was thoughtful all 
the remainder of the day. 

“I traded at Mack’s to-day,” she reported to Mr. 
Pendleton at the dinner hour. “I wonder if that kind 
of business ought not to be encouraged.” 


MRS. PENDLETON'S EXPERIMENT. 


53 


“Suit yourself, my love. Mack is a good fellow. If 
you find what you want and the price isn’t too high, 
it is just as good as anywhere, I should say.” 

“But that isn’t the whole of it, I think. If that 
young man is trying an experiment in honesty, I should 
suppose that people who like honesty better than they 
like tricks would feel a duty to help on the experiment.” 

“Church people especially. You folks over there at 
the First Church make a lot of prayers, and all that, hut 
when it comes to trading with one of you, you have no 
objection to cheating the teeth out of a man’s mouth. 
That is a kind of religion, I admit, that I don’t take 
stock in. But if Mack has a better sort of religion to 
put up, I agree with you that the praying contingent 
ought to give him a lift. I think I will do a little trad- 
ing there myself. That’s merely to avoid getting im- 
posed upon. Besides, his stock, though it is so small, 
is a fine one. Anybody can see that the first thing.” 

“Thank you, my dear. We’ll try the thing and see.” 

Now Mrs. Pendleton was a woman who, when she 
started in to do a thing, could not rest with any half- 
way measures. She thought over and over what Mr. 
Ray had said, and then reflected on her husband’s critic- 
ism of church members. She did not sympathize with 


54 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


it, but she was sad to be obliged to confess that it had 
truth in it and might be supported by instances. 

But perhaps a better state of things was coming as 
a result of Mr. Ray’s visit, and perhaps she could help 
to hasten its coming. 

The next day was the meeting of the Dorcas Society. 
It afforded her a good opportunity and she improved it. 
Mr. Mack’s attitude about business falsehoods was care- 
fully mentioned. Here and there his fine new stock of 
goods was commended. Suggestions as to the duty of 
the members to encourage this experiment in honesty 
were insinuated with all her woman’s tact. Above all, 
it was made known to several people of wealth that day 
that Mrs. Pendleton, who was a leader and the richest 
woman in the church, was trading at the new store. 
This was the most effectual piece of business of all. 
There were some who might have heeded the sugges- 
tion as to the duty to encourage Mr. Mack, but there 
were far more who would think that they were not in 
the fashion unless they patronized whatever she pat- 
tronized. 

The result was that within three or four weeks the 
new store had begun a most prosperous and lucrative 
business. 


MRS. PENDLETON’S EXPERIMENT. 


55 


Its new customers included people of ample means, 
who were not so often found at bargain counters as 
some, and who were able to appreciate the well-selected 
stock of Mr. Mack’s goods. 

It was inevitable that Mr. Lithgow, on the sharp 
lookout for what all his rivals in business might do, 
should soon learn of this accession to the custom of the 
new store. 


CHAPTER V. 


TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 

T frequently happens that the shrewdest of 
men, continually engaged in sharp-witted 
competition where the selfish motive is the 
common impulse of life, fail utterly in attempting to 
understand a completely different code of casuistry. 

This happened signally in the case of Mr. Ben Lith- 
gow. He would have smiled tolerantly and incredu- 
lously at the suggestion that Mr. Mack’s growing pros- 
perity had come about in violation of all his own prac- 
tices in doing business. He understood well enough 
the necessity of showing a face of absolute integrity to 
the world, but to him it was folly and vagary to under- 
take business outside the lines of sharp and unswerv- 
ing calculation of the competitive forces that he must 
meet. If the defeat of these forces meant the using 
of methods that his unscrupulous rivals used, up to the 
point of safety to the reputation of the house, he deemed 
that the first law of self-preservation required him to 



TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 


57 


use them. And that anybody could succeed in business 
and ignore these facts that he believed to be great laws 
of trade, was beyond his understanding. When, there- 
fore, he saw Mr. Mack’s business evidently growing, he 
only smiled on, and set his wits to work on the problem 
along the old lines. 

“It is a new stock and a new place,” he said to 
Alcott as they discussed the matter in the private office 
of the firm. “There is no capital behind, and I happen 
to know that he cannot undersell us without loss. The 
thing will break before the year is up.” 

“But meanwhile,” said Alcott, “he is getting some 
of our best customers. Mrs. Pendleton hasn’t been in 
this store for some time.” 

“There was some mistake there. But they will all 
be back after Mack has tried his little experiment. I 
am sorry for him, because it will leave him penniless 
when the break comes.” 

Alcott did not feel so sure of the break, and was 
more disturbed by the situation. 

“I think we ought to do something about it, though. 
It has affected the receipts perceptibly.” 

“We’ll give them some bargains, I think. The price 
will take care of trade in the end, no matter what he 


58 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


does. He is probably trying to sell under cost to get 
our trade.” 

“I haven’t heard it that way. I am certain we are 
going under him in all the main lines.” 

“And we have only to keep that up. That will be 
enough. But just for the present we might as well put 
out some flyers. That new stock of handerchiefs that 
came last night is a good thing to lose a little on. Sup- 
pose we try them.” 

Adopting this policy, the Lithgow house now under- 
took to beat honesty with prices. They put out a 
flaming announcement that, had Mr. Ray been around 
to follow it up, would have satisfied him of his wisdom 
in retiring Mr. Lithgow from the front in the meetings. 
That which was advertised was a most taking bargain, 
and the advertisement contained enough falsehoods to 
satisfy a professional politician. The handkerchiefs 
were set forth as a large importation direct from Lyons. 
The reason given for the ridiculously cheap price was 
that they were made in nunneries, and by persons who 
earned but a few cents a day at the labor. They were 
said to be all hand-embroidered, and the lace was of a 
certain rare quality. 

“What about Ben’s handkerchiefs?” said Paul to 


TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 59 

Mr. Mack, when the advertisement came out and had 
been examined in the new store. 

a We got the start of him in time, but he beats us 
considerably in the price,” said Mr. Mack with a smile. 
“Here are some of them.” 

Mr. Mack had been alive to the movements of the 
trade, and had bought some of a large auction stock of 
handkerchiefs but a few days previously. 

“Hand made?” asked Paul. 

“Not a bit of it. These came from Peckham’s estab- 
lishment in Boston. There is a little hand-work in 
the corners. I will show you. This part here.” 

Paul examined the handkerchief and plainly saw 
the difference in the work. 

“They were not made by nuns then?” 

“Working girls, earning about sixty cents a day. It 
is a shame, but I can’t regulate it. I wish I could.” 

“And the lace — that isn’t according to the advertise- 
ment either, perhaps.” 

“Peckham’s people buy the borders from a Boston 
house. They are American and very good too.” 

“How then can Ben sell them at so much lower price 
than we ask for them?” 


“By losing money on them.” 


CO 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


“But he says in the announcement that he is able 
to save a very small margin. Perhaps that is another 
falsehood.” 

“I can’t say. He may have had them given to him. 
But after the first bid they were all sold at one price. 
He may have succeeded in breaking the price, where I 
couldn’t; but my belief is that he loses two cents on 
every handkerchief.” 

Mr. Mack was not deceived in this. Ben had reck- 
oned that he would put into this attraction not only two 
cents on each handkerchief, but his freights and ex- 
penses, and the cost of the announcements. This was 
the regular method with flyers, and was reckoned as a 
mere advertising expense. 

The legitimate result of the announcement was real- 
ized, bringing a great number of ladies to the store, but 
the device did not fasten any of the people who had 
been recently buying at the new store. On the contrary, 
when it became known that Mr. Mack was selling the 
same handkerchiefs and plainly telling his customers 
where and how they were made, though he did not sell 
so many as the Lithgow house, the story went around 
and the town was not long in putting the real estimate 
on the flaming advertisement. The firm lost some 


TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 


G1 


dollars on the sale, and Mr. Mack made money on his 
handkerchiefs, nevertheless. 

For a time the devices of advertising and schemes 
of this nature kept customers coming in great numbers 
to the Lithgow store, and Ben felt sure that he was 
underselling, and beating the new house. But some- 
how the best people, the people of money and taste, more 
and more went to Mr. Mack. The result was that at 
the end of the summer, Ben, taking account of the 
whole situation, discovered that he was no longer com- 
peting with Mr. Mack, hut with the cheap trade houses 
of the city. He was getting many of their customers, 
and they were sure to give character to his establish- 
ment if he should continue to hid for that kind of trade. 
It was certain that the people who were more and more 
going to Mr. Mack would not come back, nor would the 
Lithgow house be able to keep the better class of trade 
that remained to them if the store should get the reputa- 
tion of being a “cheap John” establishment. More than 
all this, the game had not been worth the candle. They 
had actually lost money in the process of attempting 
to beat Mr. Mack by advertising bargains and falsifying 
in their advertising. That kind of thing had never 
been questioned before, but now, after six months, the 


62 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


truths that Mr. Ray had burned into a few minds were 
slowly creating a new standard of business in the minds 
of a great many people, and they were people who car- 
ried weight in Jacques City. 

Of course Ben Lithgow did not know he was com- 
peting against these silent forces of Christian righteous- 
ness. Less did he know that they were insinuated with 
the wit and enthusiasm of a woman’s tongue, aided by 
the gossip of clubs and the tea-talk at many social tables. 
But the condition of his business now made him sure 
that there was a movement hostile to the Lithgow house. 
And he could not help seeing that what he was losing 
Mr. Mack was gaining. From one clerk and a small 
shop, the new business had grown until there was a 
force of clerks almost equal to that of the Lithgow’s and 
Mr. Mack had taken a larger store which was yet inade- 
quate for the business. 

“I begin to think there is something the matter, 
Alcott,” said Ben one day, as they were casting up the 
situation. “Mack has some kind of drawing card that 
we haven’t seen. If we do not get at the matter soon 
we shall be ruined. There’s money enough, of course, 
but the business is getting to be in bad shape. He has 
the cream and we are fast running to the dregs.” 


TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 


63 


“That is about the size of it. You will agree with 
me before long that it is that evangelist that began it. 
That thing of abolishing all the tricks and false labels 
and all that, has taken hold. That is at the bottom of 
it, you may be sure.” 

“Perhaps. But I am not ready to admit it yet. If 
I believed it were that, I should feel sure of beating him 
in the long run. I tell you, the great laws of trade and 
the great recurring tendencies of human nature are not 
upset by a little flurry. It might do for an ideal state 
of society, but in this world people buy where they think 
they get the most for the least. The first law of trade 
is to make them think so. This house was built up on 
that idea. All the money we have came to father, and 
down to us, from carrying out that idea. It is absurd 
to suppose that a man can run against such deep-seated 
laws and succeed in the end. It must be something 
more. Mack himself is probably more popular than we 
counted on. Paul is a taking fellow, too. It was a 
mistake to let him go, visionary as he was. However, 
the thing now is to inquire what is to be done.” 

“We might try to buy him out, or take him back into 
the house. After all, the long standing of this house 
ought to be enough to attract him.” 


64 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


“And bring his methods along? It wouldn’t work. 
If he has had success with his notions about brands 
and all that, it is only for some other reason that I 
haven’t got at yet. But, as you say, he might consider 
it. Very likely there could be some yielding about some 
things. If we keep the ear of the clerks, most of the 
things he is notional about could be managed without 
setting Mack by the ears, probably.” 

Acting on his idea Ben cautiously approached Mr. 
Mack on the question of returning to the firm and com- 
bining the business. 

“My ideas are such,” said Mack, frankly, “that I 
should hardly like to be responsible for a business here- 
after that I cannot wholly control. Besides, I am mak- 
ing some money here.” 

Ben did not doubt that when he looked around, 
especially as he saw in the store at that very moment 
some of his old customers who in the past had been 
among the best buyers of his goods 

He was free in commending Mr. Mack’s methods, 
and suggested that there would be nothing in the way 
of carrying them out if the partnership were re-estab- 
lished. But Mr. Mack was satisfied to try his experi- 
ment through. He knew that for the present he was 


TO BEAT HONESTY WITH PRICES. 


65 


beating his neighbor, in spite of the tricks of advertis- 
ing and the bargains to attract the thoughtless. 

Ben returned and reported his failure to Alcott. 

“The only thing left to do,” he said grimly, “is to go 
on underselling. But we must do it with the kind of 
stocks that he sells, and lose enough in the process to 
make it worth while for his custom to come to us.” 

The Lithgow house therefore dropped the bargain 
announcements in the papers and, instead, sent through 
the mails a series of gilt-edged lithographed statements, 
quoting prices upon certain high class goods that Mack 
had been selling as specialties, so far below his rival that 
the sacrifice would be costly if the customers should 
respond. But as Ben had said, there was “money 
enough” in the Lithgow family to run a losing business 
if necessary for an indefinite time, in order to beat a 
competitor. 

These notes went to all his old customers and were 
worded as a courteous invitation to the best people, sug- 
gesting an hour in the day when they would not be dis- 
commoded by the crowds at the store. This last, Ben 
thought, was the real attraction in the circular. It 
was an appeal to the exclusiveness of the “best people.” 

But such is the fatuity of a man in the wrong! That 


66 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


very paragraph defeated him. About every person to 
whom this note was addressed knew that there were no 
large crowds going to the Lithgow store at any hour, 
and they with one accord, in the light of all the dis- 
cussion of his methods that had been made in the past 
months, understood this as another of the sly and un- 
necessary fictions that now were understood to be a 
characteristic of the announcements of Lithgow Bros. 
There was no response from the “best people” but, on 
the other hand, the bargain-hunters were out in force, 
and the house had the satisfaction of losing a good deal 
of money before they found out that they had only made 
another blunder. It was a discouraging fight for them. 

In the midst of these operations Miss Katherine 
Lithgow, Ben Lithgow’s daughter, returned from a 
foreign trip where she had been studying art and music 
after her graduation a year earlier. 

It was Katherine who at last restored the reputation 
of the Lithgow house. 


CHAPTER VI. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 

ATHERINE LITHGOW possessed a share of 
her father’s sagacity, enhanced by the fine 
intuitions of a cultured and intelligent young 
woman. She returned from Europe with the most ex- 
alted ideals, shaped at the outset in a seminary where 
exalted Christian standards provided the prevalent at- 
mosphere. She was one of the fine instances of the 
educated American girl, independent and executive, 
with a nearly imperious will that, owing to her vivacious 
amiability, carried nothing of asperity in her manner, 
hut asserted itself nevertheless with an ingenious per- 
sistence that was admirable. 

Katherine was easily the most beautiful girl as well 
as the smartest one in Jacques City, and modest enough 
not to be sensibly conscious of that fact. Her father’s 
wealth and standing in the town gave her an added 
claim to social leadership in the highest social circles, 
and she ruled there in a way without lording it over 



68 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


anybody, rather by her own grace and beauty than by 
the force of these favorable antecedents. 

This had been true before she went abroad, and it 
was certain to be the case all the more on her return, 
with the additional culture and tone of her traveling 
experience to enhance her charms. 

A few days after her arrival at home Katherine 
drove down to the store with her buckskin ponies, ac- 
companied by a friend. The store was a familiar place 
where her father, who idolized Katharine, gave her free 
run, and where she picked and purchased usually to her 
heart’s content, among the goods of the great estab- 
lishment. 

“What a lot of new clerks, papa!” she cried, pausing 
at the office to fling him a little kiss through the wire 
guards. “Where’s Paul? I looked all over for him.” 

Paul was a special favorite with Katharine. 

“I am sorry to say Paul left us. He went with 
Mack,” said Lithgow in some slight confusion. He 
did not care to say that Paul had been discharged. He 
had discovered that that affair was a slip of judgment 
and it humiliated him so that he disliked to talk about 
it. 

Katharine went on about the store and soon made 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


69 


other discoveries. She wondered if her shopping 
abroad had made the difference in her feeling about 
her father’s store. Was it cheaper than it used to be 
before she went away or was it merely the contrast to 
more pretentious establishments which she had visited? 

“Where are all the old shoppers this afternoon, 
papa?” she asked again after a tour about the place. 
“I haven’t seen a soul I know. Why! Didn’t I always 
come to the store to get the news? What has hap- 
pened?” 

“Off day, Kate, I reckon,” answered her father rath- 
er sheepishly, “But some of them of course change. 
There are plenty of customers though, you observe.” 

“Not like old times, though. Everybody I have 
seen looks dreadfully common. It seems different.” 

“And you the democrat of the family! I am afraid 
a sight of crowned heads has modified your democracy, 
my dear.” 

“No, no! Not a whit. I am crazier than ever on that 
subject, I can tell you. I brag about America every- 
where I go. But that doesn’t mean that a girl must like 
all the crowds better than she likes her own set, does 
it? And they don’t seem to be out shopping, at all 
events, this afternoon.” 


70 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


Ben could have told her with considerable accuracy 
where she would almost certainly find some of them, 
but the subject was such a sore one that he hastened 
to change it, and Katharine went home half-believing 
that she had merely fallen upon an exceptional after- 
noon in shopping practice. 

But when she had tried it several afternoons more, 
and had failed to get a satisfactory answer from her 
father to her sharp, sly questions on the subject, she put 
her wits at work, and soon found out the facts. 

For one thing she remembered that Paul was at Mr. 
Mack’s and, as she wanted to see him and had not hap- 
pened to meet him elsewhere, she went into the new 
store. But as it was in the morning there were none 
of her special friends at the establishment. 

Paul was pleased and confused by this radiant 
visitor, and did no end of blushing under the frank 
eyes of Miss Lithgow whom, to tell the truth, he had 
long adored afar off. Paul was over-modest in his dis- 
position, and had not ventured to dream of lifting his 
aspirations to the level of this dazzling star. But he 
could not prevent himself, and no one could prevent 
him, from worshiping her afar off. And as he saw no 
harm in that, he did not try to prevent it. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


71 


Katherine had all the time there was, and Paul did 
not happen to be driven with work, so she stayed and 
gossiped with the clerk for an hour with the freedom of 
old acquaintance. The theme at length became some- 
what religious in a way, and turned on the meetings. 
Katherine had been duly informed in her letters from 
home that the meetings had been a disappointment 
and a failure. 

“I did not call them a failure,” said Paul. “Neither 
does Mr. Mack. True, they did not at the time add 
many members to the church, but they sowed a good 
deal of needed truth in the town.” 

“I heard that it was all about business. Papa 
thought the man was out of his place.” Paul did not 
answer this, and Katharine went on volubly: “The 
church is as nice and dull as ever then, I suppose. I 
wish they would have a revival, or something, to ’liven 
things up. What are the young people doing anyhow?” 

Paul told all he thought might be new to her as 
to the work at the church, especially of the Endeavor 
Society of which he was still president. 

“I wonder what you left papa’s store for. Didn’t 
he pay you enough?” 

This abrupt question upset Paul for a moment. 


72 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


though he had been preparing his mind for it from the 
first moment she began the conversation. He cast down 
his eyes and colored deeply. Katharine instantly 
divined that there was something indelicate in her 
question, and said with a little toss of her head: 

“It is no business of mine, of course. What a lot 
of trade you have here. Mr. Mack must be getting very 
rich. But I must go. Here Fve wasted a whole hour 
talking to you. You don’t deserve it, Paul Carroll. 
Now don’t ask me to come again. I’m coming anyhow. 
I’ll he at the Endeavor meeting now every time, regu- 
larly, too. Oh, I have a whole head full of ideas to fire 
off! I’m afraid I’ve interfered with your work, 
though.” 

She charmed him with a vanishing smile and sailed 
out like a sunbeam leaving Paul in a flutter of good 
spirits. 

“Tell me why Paul left your store, papa,” said Miss 
Persistence that evening at dinner. She was as curi- 
ous as any other woman, and Paul’s embarrassment had 
led her to suspect that there had been some disagreeable 
trouble about the separation. 

“Mack may have offered him more,” said Lithgow, 
feeling guilty under her searching glance. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


73 


“But I should think there was money enough to keep 
a fine salesman like him, if you had wished. He is head 
clerk at Mr. Mack’s. But I thought you never got left 
in that fashion, papa. Did you get left, I wonder?” 

“ ‘Get left/ comes near being slang — for a re- 
turned European tourist — doesn’t it? Well, perhaps I 
did get left. But Carroll isn’t the only — ■” 

“ ‘Pebble’? You were going to say it, Mr. Lecturer- 
on-slang. Confess it now. But you haven’t told me.” 

“Told you what? About Paul? Well, he did now 
and then make slips like the rest of us poor mortals. 
My loss is Mack’s gain, so there it is.” 

Katharine did not get much farther with this ex- 
pert in dissemblance, and was obliged to content herself 
with guessing that Mr. Mack had lured Paul away by 
a larger offer. 

But having found a way to meet Paul without seem- 
ing to be too forward about the matter, this independ- 
ent girl dropped into Mack’s store again, of course. She 
was wise enough to understand that Paul would not 
make any advances toward acquaintance and friend- 
ship himself, because she was socially above him, in the 
ordinary estimates. As he had been her father’s clerk, 
and they both were workers in the same church, she 


74 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


felt nothing of indelicacy in seeking his acquaintance, 
especially as she liked him over well. 

But she was not independent enough, or she was 
too diplomatic, not to have some natural feminine arti- 
fices to divert attention from the real purpose of her 
visits to the new store. She went with some friend, 
or she had some purchase to make, or the church busi- 
ness had some point needing a consultation — anyway, 
she went to Mr. Mack’s whenever she felt disposed, and 
Paul might have justly felt himself encouraged by her 
cordial manner when she met him there and elsewhere. 

But the progress of this little affair between the 
young people was accompanied by discoveries on Katha- 
rine’s part. She was not long in finding out where her 
oldtime friends and acquaintance and the “best people” 
whom she knew were doing their shopping. This as- 
tonished and grieved her more than she showed. She 
wondered how Mr. Mack had been able to entice them 
away from her father’s great establishment. There 
must have been something unfair in the competition, 
she said at first. It seemed to her a good deal ungrate- 
ful in Mr. Mack to set up a rival business and beat the 
old and respectable house of Lithgow Brothers in this 
fashion. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 75 

Katharine reflected on the matter for a time and 
then went to her father about it. 

“Why, he seems to have all the cream of the people 
with taste and money in town, papa,” she said in a dis- 
mayed tone. “Why have they left your place to trade 
there? I don’t understand it.” 

Lithgow, beset thus by this decisive young woman, 
could not long evade her inquiries. * 

“I have studied the matter a good deal, dear,” he 
said to her, “and I am not any nearer to understanding 
it. We have had a good little fight over it, and so far 
Mack comes out ahead. I attribute it to his personal 
popularity. I never thought he had it in him. Then 
Paul is liked, too. It was a mistake to let him go.” 

“I mean to find out, then,” said this resolute young 
person, with a frown. “There is nobody at the store 
now but the vulgarest of the town. That’s all right in 
its way; but the store isn’t what it was — and I don’t like 
it. I’ll ask— ” 

She stopped, smiled, colored a trifle and tossed her 
head slightly to finish the sentence. Then for fear her 
father would inquire about her half-expressed intention 
she abruptly fell to talking about the Paris galleries. 

“I want you to tell me everything about it now, 


76 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


Paul Carroll,” she said with a seraphic smile, when the 
next day she went to the new store. 

“Certainly! I know everything,” said Paul with a 
little laugh. “Ask me and see.” 

“It is about papa. Tell me first why you left the 
store.” 

“There was more help than was needed,” said Paul, 
casting down his eyes. 

“Well! What else?” 

She knew there was more, and Paul knew it too, and 
he only fidgeted with his hands among some dress goods 
that he was showing her, and said nothing. 

“I don’t see why you should — should — treat me that 
way,” said Miss Cunning with almost a little whimper. 

Paul felt like a criminal when she talked to him that 
way, and wondered if he really ought to tell her. 

“But you needn’t confide in me unless you choose, 
of course,” she went on, with a little show of offense in 
her manner, and beginning to draw on her glove as if 
she would go. 

That settled it with this sensitive young adorer. 

“I had a little trouble about a cloak, if you must 
know,” he blurted out, feeling that he had now driven 
her entirely out of his acquaintance. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


77 


“Oh! But you needn’t be so chary about telling 
me/’ she said, warming up again and laying down the 
glove. “I think we are friends enough for that.” 

After that delicious speech, sent home with a smile 
and a flash of her eyes that made Paul feel as if 
the sun had just broken out of a storm cloud, he 
would have told her anything she might have de- 
manded. It was not so easy to make her under- 
stand, and he sedulously refrained from telling the 
whole truth, even then. She got the impression 
that Paul had made a bad break about selling Mrs. 
Pendleton a cloak. 

“I wonder if you would come back?” she asked 
dubiously. 

“I couldn’t do that, honorably, and leave Mr. Mack. 
But I have little reason to think I would be invited 
back.” 

“But suppose you were,” persisted Katharine. 

“It would not be possible — under the circum- 
stances.” 

“Then you don’t believe in forgiving and letting by- 
gones go — perhaps?” 

“It isn’t that, but it would be using Mr. Mack badly. 
I hope you see that.” 


78 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


“What was it that Mr. Mack didn’t like, or that papa 
didn’t like — when they separated, I mean?” 

“I think — it was something about the — the — adver- 
tising,” answered Paul, not able to evade her persistence, 
but not sure that he ought to talk. 

But Katharine had made a good beginning this 
time, and after that, while she remained she talked 
about other matters, greatly to Paul’s relief. 

But on this hint about the advertising she went to 
work on her problem. She had set herself to the task 
of finding out why Mr. Mack had taken away the custom 
from her father’s store. Her reasoning led her to the 
plain inference that if it were the advertising, then 
doubtless Mack’s advertising would be on some other 
plan. It was easy to find out. 

The next day Mr. Mark Donnelly, at the office of the 
principal daily of the city, was charmed to receive a 
call from this gracious clue-hunter who, after various 
other things on account of which she did not call, but 
which seemed to be the real reason, came to the thing 
which she was after as if it were a mere incidental. It 
was to see the file* — a privilege accorded to anybody 
who asked, and that had no significance at all at the 
office, so that she need not have been so circumspect. 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


79 


But thanking him very graciously Katharine dived into 
the columns of the well-managed daily. 

Several times she might have been heard to make 
such observations as “Hm!” “Oh!” “Is that it?” and 
“I see,” all to herself, that indicated that she was 
getting light on her subject. 

She got red in the face before she was through, and 
when she went off at last she had a troubled little frown 
on her fine face. 

But now she was on the scent she grew absolutely 
secretive, and talked to nobody about stores and such 
things. But on her own account she began to be at the 
store — her father’s first — a great deal, and took obser- 
vations. Nobody could say what she was doing 
exactly, but as she had free run there she was able to 
examine to her heart’s content. When she wished to 
see a box or a brand she did so. She had a small 
magnifying glass, and this she used a great deal among 
the fabrics. Sometimes she asked questions too, but 
with such a simple air that none of the clerks and 
counter girls could have imagined her reason. And 
in a little note-book that she carried along she jotted 
down a great quantity of things that she carried away 
and digested at her leisure. 


80 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


After a time she transferred her operations to the 
new store. Here she had a little different plan. She 
bought various articles that she did not need, and 
managed to go shopping also with several friends. 
During these spying expeditions she was in the way of 
learning some things she had never known before. 
The way cleared amazingly before her. The shams 
and cheats of the ordinary trade, and especially of the 
Lithgow trade, were exposed in all their nakedness in 
contrast with the methods of the new store. Brands 
and labels and trade marks stared out at her their tell- 
tale evidence. The difference between clerks that 
would confidently recommend a spurious article, and 
those that were rigidly instructed as to their duty to 
state exactly the quality of the thing sold, was im- 
pressed in a dozen ways. In one store there was a 
taint of fraud, all in the regular run of the world’s 
business, over every article and every transaction. In 
the other, truth was stamped wherever she turned her 
eyes. 

It was her own father that suffered by this contrast 
and it almost made her sick as she went on. But she 
no longer had any doubt about the merits of the com- 
petition. A new standard of business had come to 


KATHERINE INVESTIGATES. 


81 


the front, and it had succeeded. How, she could not 
tell. How it had been aided by Mrs. Pendleton and 
those who followed her, how it had been fortunately 
assisted by various discoveries of the tricks at the other 
store, all the steps of it, were history now, not easily to 
be learned. But Katharine came to an end of her 
investigations and sat down one day to cast up and 
inquire of herself what she should do. With all her 
heart she was with the new method. She was a Chris- 
tian, and had learned her Christian principles under 
the really valuable and intelligent training of her 
father. Yet here she was at the end of this investi- 
gation, face to face with a system of business in which 
her father had been brought up from his youth, by 
means of which the money that had given her all the 
luxuries of wealth had been gained, and it was all a 
travesty and a stigma on Christian honesty. And her 
father, whom she had been actually proud of as the 
most sagacious and able business man in all the state, 
and as a man whose business standing was above re- 
proach — her father — had been no better than the 
system, had bowed down to it and believed in it. 

But Katharine did not shrink from facing this 
situation. She felt that it was all because he was in 


82 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


the trade. He was not consciously dishonest. He was 
doing what all business men felt obliged to do. It was 
ordinary competition, and no one spoke against it. 
The best of men did it. 

Thus while, with the best of judgment and with 
rare charity for her father, she tried to understand the 
case, she settled down to rigid determination that she 
would change the methods of the Lithgow house, 

“Or know why not/’ she said with a resolute setting 
of her white teeth together. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE REFORMATION. 

AUL CARROLL hardly knew how he drifted 
into the practice of going so much in 
Katharine’s company. It was a most natural 
affair, that he seemed not able to avoid. Katharine 
must he escorted home from evenings by somebody, 
and Paul was the only one likely to offer, since every- 
body but Paul saw plainly enough Katharine’s prefer- 
ence and gave him a clear field. And when he found 
out that the matter was serious, he nevertheless allowed 
the happy days to drift without any definite attempt to 
take himself in hand. 

Then, after a time, when his feelings were betrayed 
one day, as they were conversing in the store, Kath- 
arine took his inadvertent betrayal as a matter of 
course, and astonished him so much by her manner 
that he could no longer avoid believing that his love 
was returned. And after that the matter amounted to 
an “understanding,” and Katharine did not refuse to 



84 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


wear Paul’s ring, and consider herself an engaged 
young lady. 

When this stage of their acquaintance had been 
reached, Katharine took Paul into her confidence, and 
induced him to tell all he knew about the meetings, 
the competition between the stores, and the methods 
by which her father had been left behind in the 
rivalry. 

Paul was averse, naturally, to saying anything un- 
pleasant about his possible father-in-law, and Kath- 
arine appreciated his delicacy, nevertheless persisting 
until she had the whole story so far as he was able to 
enlighten her. He listened with interest to her an- 
nouncement that she had determined upon the task of 
converting her father; and, compelled by the resolute 
arts of this irresistible fascinator, he engaged to lend 
his assistance. 

Lithgow was too wise in his knowledge of character 
in general, and of his daughter’s disposition in par- 
ticular, to interpose any obstacles in the way of this 
intimacy. He was confident that Paul had in him the 
elements that would make him successful, though he 
had made the mistake of telling the truth to the spoil- 
ing of a cloak trade. Lithgow had never been able to 


THE REFORMATION. 


85 


replace him in the store by any one of half his knowl- 
edge in fabrics, which was Paul’s specialty, and he 
would have doubled his former salary to have him back. 
When he learned from Katharine about the “under- 
standing,” he kissed her and cordially approved her 
choice. He added that there was no finer young fellow 
in Jacques City than Paul. 

Lithgow, in fact, hoped that this affair would bring 
Paul back to the store eventually, and partly restore 
the equilibrium that began to he upset the day he was 
discharged. 

Katharine, with the gentle arts of a horn fascinator, 
wound this young lover about her fingers, so to speak, 
and soon had him committed to her project. When 
she announced to him that she had resolved to convert 
her father to the new business standards, he smiled a 
little incredulously, whereat she accused him of a 
deadly affront, and played on his fears and his affec- 
tions, and afterward plied him with enough flattery 
and argument to convince him that Lithgow must be 
the most malleable of men and the easiest imaginable 
case to persuade. She began with a deeply plotted 
skill: 

“I wonder,” she said to her father in the store one 


86 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


day, carrying him a box of bead trmming, “I wonder 
why this box is marked ‘Geneva’? Paul says this is 
made in Attleboro, Massachusetts.” 

Lithgow, casting up some items of an auction 
purchase, looked up with a little frown. 

“Paul didn’t buy that, though. Take what you 
want. I’ll have another case opened.” 

“I don’t want any. But I want to make a few 
changes. May I?” 

“Change whatever you please. Labels, do you 
mean?” 

“Yes, papa.” 

“All right, only don’t destroy the buying mark.” 

Katharine said: “Thank you,” and went off with a 
cunning smile on her face. She found the clerk at the 
head of the notions counter and showed him the box. 

“These are genuine Geneva goods aren’t they, Mr. 
Clark?” 

Clark, with the usual business evasiveness, said 
promptly: 

“We import a great deal of it. Shall I wrap it up 
for you?” 

“Where is that which you import?” asked Kath- 
arine with a twinkle of her eye. “Show me some.” 


THE REFORMATION. 


87 


“Why, this — I thought — but perhaps you meant 
to see the whole invoice. It is up stairs.” 

“Now, Mr. Clark, don’t you know that this never 
came from Geneva? It isn’t imported, is it?” 

Clark hesitated, colored and then said slowly: 

“We only sell it as we are instructed. You know 
where the orders come from, Miss Lithgow.” 

“Yes. Tell me how you like this — this — falsify- 
ing, Mr. Clark.” 

“It is the ordinary business,” said Clark, a little 
doggedly. 

“But it isn’t honest, is it?” 

“Very far from it. But it is trade. If trade were 
honest we would soon go down, I fancy.” * 

“And I don’t fancy. All right. I am not blaming 
anybody, Mr. Clark. You have to obey orders or go. 
I understand that. But I have a little liberty from 
father. Please take the label off, Mr. Clark.” 

“Take it off?” 

“I will, then, if you don’t care to take the responsi- 
bility.” 

Accordingly she took her little pocket knife, and 
deftly split the foreign label out of the end of the box. 
Then she carried the box to the marker and borrowed 


88 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


some “black-pot,” with which she wrote plainly on the 
box: 

“Best American. Made in Attleboro, Mass.” 

She carried the box back to Mr. Clark. 

“It is a good work to kill a lie, Mr. Clark. When 
you open another box I wish you to take out the goods, 
and sell them from this box. Either do this or mark 
the other boxes. And hereafter they are Attleboro 
goods not Geneva. You understand?” 

“If you have consulted Mr. Lithgow — yes, I sup- 
pose it is all right. I should suppose it would not hurt 
the sale to tell the truth.” 

“Never mind if it does — this goes. If anybody 
asks about, it you have only to tell the whole business. 
You understand?” 

“Very well,” answered Clark smiling. He had 
heard about the methods at Mack’s, and wondered if 
they were to have them here. 

Katharine, with a red spot on either cheek and her 
eyes burning with triumphant excitement, went back 
to the office. 

“I have been looking over some things in the store, 
papa. I think I know what is the matter here. Mr. 
Mack is beating you. I think it is because of the way 


THE REFORMATION. 


89 


he advertises. I wish yon should let me write an ad- 
vertisement for you.” 

“A la Mack, I suppose,” said Lithgow, smiling at 
her. “I suppose young ladies have to be amused, 
though. Advertising is a delicate business. You 
might do the store a great amount of mischief in a 
very short time.” 

“Pshaw! I won’t hurt anything. Let me try 
now.” 

“Try all you please, then. I can stand it. Per- 
haps you may prove to be a genius at it. Get Paul to 
help you.” 

Lithgow was indulgent, and cared very little what 
she might do. He suspected that she had been im- 
bibing some of the new ideas that prevailed at Mack’s. 

Katharine was too wise to delay or argue after she 
had gained her point. She went off triumphant, and 
the next morning her advertisement appeared. It was 
an announcement in small black type of a special sale 
of genuine American bead trimmings, guaranteed to be 
the manufacture of Blank & Co., Attleboro, Mass. A 
fine line underneath stated that these trimmings had 
heretofore been sold as imported Geneva wares. 

“But we haven’t any Attleboro goods,” said Lith- 


90 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS . 


gow to her when she came to the store next day. “At 
least, I don’t know where these were made.” 

“They are not Geneva. Paul says they are Attle- 
boro goods.” 

“That settles it, then. Paul knows, of course. 
But why do you do such a Quixotic thing, dear?” 

“The other isn’t honest,” said Katharine, quietly, 
and with a note of pain in her voice that was not lost 
on her father. 

“It is the ordinary business,” said Lithgow, repeat- 
ing the platitude of Clark. “The standards of business 
cannot be disregarded. Either it amounts to going out 
of business entirely, or of conformity to the great laws 
that govern all trade.” 

“Not if they are laws of falsehood. That is the 
reason Mr. Mack has beaten you. People know that 
when they buy there they never get cheated.” 

Lithgow made no answer and Katharine went away. 

But the next day she came and changed some more 
labels and inquired after her head sale. It had not met 
her expectations. The advertisement had done some- 
thing to incite trade, hut not all she had hoped. 

But there were effects that she knew nothing about. 
The first of these was on certain people in the First 


THE REFORMATION. 


91 


Church. Pastor Foss, who had watched all these 
movements carefully, saw the advertisement. 

“That looks like one of Mack’s announcements,” 
he said to his wife at dinner that evening. “I wonder 
if Lithgow means to take that tack, too. He has been 
losing trade. Perhaps that has waked him up.” 

Mr. Foss, in all the months since Mr. Kay’s visit, 
had been himself forced to observe as never before the 
things that hitherto had not impressed him in the least. 
Business, and its methods, had come before him in a 
hundred ways, and the truth of what Mr. Ray had 
taught had been forced home upon him almost every 
day. He was one of those who had taken to trading 
more or less with Mr. Mack, and who in his heart had 
hoped that his daring but righteous experiment would 
succeed. 

Mrs. Pendleton pointed out the advertisement to 
her husband. He laughed at it. 

“Ben is a good imitator. I thought he used to have 
a faculty for originating, but he seems to have declined. 
I reckon it is a case of The devil was sick.’” 

Paul saw the advertisement and asked Katharine 
about it. 

She blushed hotly, and told him that he and Mr. 


92 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


Mack needn’t think they had a monoply of high-class 
advertising. She laughed and refused to talk any 
more. But she asked no end of questions about labels 
and brands and trade-marks that Paul answered with 
delight. It was tonic to have her in the store, and he 
would have answered any number of conundrums for 
her to keep her there. 

But the chief effect, after all, was upon Lithgow. 
It was produced, however, not so much by the adver- 
tisement as by Katharine’s words. For the first time 
he began to have doubts of the excusableness of his 
business methods. Alcott might talk, and Mack might 
fool with any number of new ideas — all that had little 
effect; but Katharine — it was different when she spoke. 
She was the apple of his eye, the one altogether lovely 
among human beings to him. Besides, she had corro- 
borated the judgment of his brother. She had plainly 
told him that he was being beaten in business by using 
the old methods. 

It would be unjust to say that this was the motive 
that moved him most. But, on the other hand, it 
would be less than truth to say that it was an unim- 
portant consideration. When Alcott had said it he 
refused to believe. But now Katharine had said it. 


THE REFORMATION. 


93 


And soon there was awakened in Lithgow a whole 
train of reflections that at last brought up with the 
preaching of the evangelist. As he lay awake that 
night, thinking, until the sun crept in at his window, 
the plain convicting passion of the preacher’s words 
came back to him. He had never forgotten them, but 
he had always hitherto remembered them to resent 
them. 

How that picture of Christ in the background — 
Christ whom he had professed to serve, Christ whom he 
had essayed to present to young men, the picture that 
Mr. Ray had drawn of Christ walking through his store 
— it would not leave him. He thought of it all day. 
It was with him waking or sleeping for the whole week, 
while Katharine was experimenting with the labels and 
making more advertisements. 

Ben Lithgow was a man who had the theory of 
Christianity completely worked out for himself. He 
knew what to teach to others. Now he began to feel 
it all go to pieces. He began to feel that he had built 
his building without a foundation. The something ' 
that had been left out, somehow left un jointed and 
chaotic his whole scheme of faith. 

He must begin again. And he had the courage to 


94 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


begin again. He was not in the least intentionally a 
dishonest man. It only needed that he should see his 
methods in the light of a clear conviction of their 
essential disharmony with his Master’s demands. 

“Come into the office, Katharine,” he said one day, 
when this struggle had been waged and finished within 
him. 

His eyes were dark with haggard strain of weari- 
ness, and the conflict had left him weak and pale as 
if he had fought with a fever. 

“I have come to your way of thinking. And I 
have decided to close up the store for awhile.” 

“Oh! Close up the store?” said Katharine, with a 
sympathetic pain in her voice. 

“Yes. Only for a while. When I open it again 
the falsehoods will all be cleaned out of it — forever.” 

Katharine cried at this, and hung on his neck with 
soothing words of mingled pity and gratitude. It was 
heart-rending to her to see his strong pride broken like 
this. Yet she felt that it would be a new day for them 
both. 

The store was closed. The clerks were retained on 
half pay, and then the reformation began. Ben him- 
self, silent and haggard, but with a new light in his 


THE REFORMATION. 


95 


eyes, went about superintending the alterations in the 
great stock. Every lie in the place was discovered and 
removed. Brands were erased and new brands made. 
Boxes were relabeled and piece marks replaced. The 
cheaper goods were largely stored away in a department 
by themselves, and marked down for a special sale 
under the honest tags. 

******* 

When the house of Lithgow had been operated for 
a year or so under the new standards of business, an 
arrangement was completed whereby it was consoli- 
dated with the new store. Mr. Mack’s interest was 
now equal to that of the Lithgows’ and Paul became 
the business manager. Katharine thought this a posi- 
tion to be proud of, and became in due time the 
business manager’s wife. 

The following February, three years from the time 
of Mr. Bay’s visit, matters at the First Church became 
interesting enough to warrant the planning of another 
series of meetings. 

“I hope they will be more successful than the last 
were,” said Mr. Foss, as the leading brethren were dis- 
cussing the matter together at the pastor’s house. 

“It all depends on the man,” suggested Deacon Park, 


90 


A MATTER OF BUSINESS. 


who had not yet seen the harm of business methods 
of the ordinary kind. 

“There is hut one man to he thought of,” said Mr. 
Lithgow with a little ring of joy in his voice. “We 
never have had more than one really successful revival 
since I was a member here.” 

“That was in 1878,” said Deacon Park. 

“No,” said Lithgow earnestly. “It was three years 
ago. I move that we ask Mr. Ray to return.” 

And when, in spite of the opposition of Deacon 
Park, Mr. Ray was recalled, the first man he chose to 
assist him w r as Ben Lithgow. And this time there 
was a revival such as had not been seen in Jacques 
City in many years. 

One night when the interest seemed to have 
culminated, and a great number of men young and 
old had committed themselves to a Christian life, Mr. 
Ray preached again on business methods. There was 
a profound sensation, and many knew the instances 
that he had guardedly pointed out in his address. 
But when he was done, perhaps the most remarkable 
incident of the whole proceeding occurred. 

A man arose in the back part of the church and 
began to speak. 


THE REFORMATION. 


97 


“I have watched this church from the outside/’ he 
said, “for a good many years. My wife has prayed for 
me, and Mr. Foss has reasoned with me. But all that 
didn’t move me. But when I bought a pair of Ameri- 
can gloves one day at Theodore Mack’s store, I began 
to be converted. Brethren, there is something in a 
religion that makes a man tell the truth about gloves. 
I have thought it all over, and I have made up my mind 
that a religion that goes into the business of false labels 
and spurious tags, is a kind I want. Yesterday, I 
swept the last lie out of my factory. To-day I want to 
confess the religion of Jesus Christ.” 

Mr. Pendleton sat down. His wife was weeping. 
The house was still. 

Then in a far corner of the gallery a soft musical 
voice began to sing. The great congregation joined in: 

“Where He leads me I will follow, 

Where He leads me I will follow, 

Where He leads me I will follow, 

I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way.” 


THE END. 









































































ON THE WHOLE. 






ON THE WHOLE, 


CHAPTER I. 

“THIS IS VERY GOOD ORE.” 

N the whole’ — it is a large thing to say. But 
haven’t we to look at everything so? ‘On 
the whole.’ Yes; it takes patience and it 
takes faith, hut God does justify himself on the whole.” 

Pastor Tellgood laid his hand almost caressingly 
upon Dalton’s shoulder as he spoke. He loved the 
young man, and felt how good a thing it was to lead 
him along truth’s plain road. The sunshine fell softly 
through the gently whispering elms that shaded the 
green where they had seated themselves in quiet con- 
verse. 

Dalton was a modest hank clerk, and a member of 
the East Church where pastor Tellgood preached to 
his small village flock. 

“I have some faith that it is so, Mr. Tellgood,” 



102 


ON THE WHOLE. 


said Dalton seriously. "But, as you say, ‘on the whole’ 
is such a large phrase. If we could only see the whole 
now. But what do we see? It is all around us, it is 
in every experience. ‘Wrong forever on the throne’; 
‘God on the side of the heaviest artillery’ to all appear- 
ances. The inequality of things, the prosperity of men 
who are merely sharp, and have no hearts — it is a con- 
stant strain of faith to know it all.” 

The preacher looked half sadly at his companion. 
He saw that Dalton at twenty-five was beginning to 
wear the look of a man of cares. He knew the story 
of his heroic struggles, of his support of an aged 
mother, his long hours of private study to get through 
a course and take a degree without going to college. 
And he remembered the examples that Dalton was 
thinking about in the town, of men who had grown 
rich and arrogant merely through selfish grasping for 
gain. 

‘‘I understand it, Dalton,” he said sympathetically. 
“Nevertheless I should not fear to offer, if it were in 
my power, the privilege to you of changing places with 
any of the men whose money we might either of us like 
to have. To be such men, is it worth trying for?” 

“Does that meet the case, sir? What if such a 


THIS IS VERY GOOD ORE. 


103 


man as I am or, better far, such a man as you — what if 
such men in the ordering of the world, had the money? 
How much better use they would make of it.” 

“Sometimes such men do. It is not always the 
unworthy men who prosper. Mr. Winslow is rich, and 
Mr. Edwards is rich.” 

“True. I do not by any means think that things 
are all out of joint. But you will allow that there is 
no assurance that a man will have the good things of 
this world on account of his virtue.” 

“That, or something better. Indeed, his virtue it- 
self is something better. And then, as I said, it is 
‘on the whole.’ We do not see the whole lives of 
men. If we did we should be much nearer to be- 
lieving that even temporal blessings accompany right- 
eousness.” 

“I suppose we get all the good we deserve, and I 
am such a long way from being righteous that I have 
no basis for a personal complaint; and yet I sometimes 
wonder if I shall ever be able to support a wife. I 
work rather hard, as you know.” 

“Why do you two wait any longer? If Julia is 
the girl I think her, she will be a helpmeet, not a 
burden.” 


104 


ON TEE WHOLE. 


“I know that. But I can never take the risk. I 
haven’t enough to keep a house. I must wait.” 

They had talked this matter over a great many 
times. The relation between them was closely con- 
fidential, and Dalton had often found comfort in pour- 
ing out his troubles into the sympathetic ears of his 
pastor. Not that Dalton was a misanthrope. He 
rarely complained of his adversity and kept a cheerful 
manner that made him well liked by all the town. But 
people had come to understand that he did not get on, 
and the more prosperous and thoughtless of his 
acquaintances thought it was some lack of natural 
faculty. They did not simply know the circumstances. 

“If I had Uncle Dodge’s money, I should be mar- 
ried before sundown. But I am little likely to see 
a penny of that.” 

“Do you desire to?” 

There was something peculiar in the minister’s 
tone that caused Dalton to look at him. 

“No. I couldn’t feel sure after all whose money I 
might he spending. That’s my confidential opinion 
of Uncle Dodge.” 

“He is a case in point, I suppose, to illustrate your 
view of the world,” laughed Mr. Tellgood. 


THIS IS VERT GOOD ORE. 


105 


“Yes. Uncle Dodge stands in the town as a man 
against whom nobody can bring charges, hut he is sharp. 
He does as a hundred other men all about here do; only 
he is rather more successful. He gets the better in the 
bargain. That is business, I suppose/’ 

“I understand you. It is the way of the world 
and I am not disposed to deny it. Mr. Dodge is a 
pewholder in the church and his wife is one of our 
members. Nevertheless, I cannot approve his methods 
of getting his money. Such men as Mr. Dodge give 
occasion for things that the worldly say about the 
church.” 

As they sat thus conversing two strangers walked 
up the street and across the green. Dalton and the 
minister saw that they were strangers. They had the 
unmistakable air of the city about them which Dalton 
recognized. 

“'Beg pardon, gentlemen, but we are looking for the 
residence of Mr. Benjamin Dodge. They said at the 
hotel that it is in this direction. Can you direct us?” 

The speaker was a man of middle age, with a very 
sharp and somewhat shifting eye and a very smooth 
and insinuating voice. Dalton in his mind at once 
framed the word “crook.” 


106 


ON THE WHOLE. 


“Mr. Dodge is my uncle,” he said rather coldly. 
He did not like the strangers. He wondered what they 
wanted with his Uncle Dodge. “The house is the 
large yellow T house — you can see the wing just beyond 
the fringe of trees,” he added, pointing with his hand. 

The men thanked him with almost ceremonious 
politeness and walked on towards their destination. 

“I wonder who they are. I do not remember to 
have seen them before. Fll ask Uncle Dodge, I think.” 

The two men resumed their discussion and soon 
forgot the strangers. 

Mr. Benjamin Dodge, standing on his lawn to 
supervise the work of some men who were removing 
a picket fence, was presently accosted by the two 
strangers.' Mr. Dodge was an almost benevolent look- 
ing man of fifty years and accounted one of the well- 
to-do citizens of Collodion. The country was still new 
and Mr. Dodge’s opportunities for land speculation 
were numerous. He was agent for various Eastern 
owners, and had the name of a sharp intermediary, 
who could put virtues into his tracts of land that they 
did not always possess, and drive sharp bargains with 
intending settlers. It was well known nevertheless, 
that Mr. Dodge had overdone the land business so far 


THIS IS VERT GOOD ORE. 


107 


as his own purchases were concerned. He was, in fact, 
in a deeply mortgaged condition, and his seeming 
prosperity might easily collapse upon any general run 
upon his credit. 

The two strangers introduced themselves to Mr. 
Dodge as prospectors from Denver. 

After a long time of gentle beating around the 
bush, they asked Mr. Dodge to suggest a price on a 
certain piece of land a half mile from the town on the 
lower slope of a rocky hill. It was about as worthless 
a tract as Mr. Dodge controlled. It was mortgaged 
for all that it was worth, and he paid a costly rate of 
interest. 

“Who wishes to buy?” asked Mr. Dodge. “I might 
sell if I got my price.” 

Mr. Sinks, who did the talking, dropped his eyes 
for a little as if in deep thought. Then he said slowly: 

“Perhaps you might like to make an arrangement 
to sell us some undivided part of it, — say one-fourth.” 

Mr. Dodge was puzzled at this and looked at the 
speaker fixedly. 

Mr. Sinks hesitated for a moment and then diving 
into a small hand-bag that he carried, he brought out 
a piece of grayish-blue stone. Mr. Dodge saw instantly 


108 


ON THE WHOLE. 


that it was ore. There was a shine of yellow gold 
flecking the mineral that made it sparkle in the sun. 
Mr. Dodge almost caught his breath. He thought of 
the rocky tract of land at once. 

“This is very good ore, Mr. Dodge. We have been 
prospecting a very little on the hill tract. The rock 
there is a good deal like this. Here is more of it.” 

“I suppose you had no right to bring it away,” said 
Mr. Dodge, shutting his lips a little unpleasantly. He 
did not look so benevolent when he had this expression. 

“Bless you, this did not come from your land! I 
only suggest that, if it had, you could probably realize 
a very good price for the hill. It is very fair ore.” 

Mr. Sinks paused and eyed his man sharply. He 
did not know how fast nor how far he could go with 
Mr. Dodge. He was a rather shrewd reader of the face, 
and had heard enough to convince him that he could 
undertake his game without much risk. 

“What’s that? You mean that there is a good 
chance of gold in that lot? I shouldn’t wonder. How 
much are you offering for it?” 

“Well — if we give you — say— half of the best price 
it will bring and take the other half — you would still 
make a big thing,” said Sinks mysteriously. 


THIS IS VERY GOOD ORE. 


109 


“I don’t understand. Give you half? Half of 
what?” 

“Why, if anybody should find gold there in some 
quantity, it would be worth — the land would sell for — a 
good price of course. It wouldn’t be so strange. 
Hickson’s lode is two miles away on the other divide. 
That pays rich, I am told.” 

“True, but if you have found gold on my land — 
well, I should be willing to make it right. Point it 
out and I will pay something for the trouble, of course. 
It would save all the expense of prospecting again. It 
has been all looked up once or twice and nothing found. 
Still, if you have found what the prospectors missed — ■” 

“If we had do you think we would be likely to come 
here first with the news?” 

Sinks laughed at the simplicity of the proposition 
and eyed Mr. Dodge with a sly look. 

“What is your object, then, in mentioning the mat- 
ter?” asked Mr. Dodge, certain that there was some 
deal intended. 

“Well, we are old California prospectors, myself 
and Cobb here. We have been known to find gold 
where there wasn’t any. We sold a tract about three 
months ago for a man down in the lower counties — 


110 


ON TEE WHOLE. 


never mind where — for eighty thousand dollars. The 
land before that had been offered for fifteen. To be 
sure the gold didn’t pan out as good as it looked on 
our showing, hut the purchaser is dead sure he will 
strike it yet. Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t.” 

Dodge whistled and Sinks smiled. 

“I see,” said Mr. Dodge slowly, and growing red in 
the face. The sly, significant tone of Sinks had en- 
lightened him more than the words themselves. Mr. 
Dodge had heard of the mine salting process. 

Now here was a man who stood fairly well in his 
community, and hitherto had done nothing worse, 
probably, than drive over-sharp bargains, such as half 
the real estate speculators do as a matter of common 
practice. But his mind was all ready to contemplate 
a sharper thing. He would not do this thing alone 
of himself, hut the devil will find the soil ready when 
his agents come to sow the seed of suggestion. 

“How much will it cost to sell my land, Mr. Sinks?” 

“Value of these hits of rock — say a thousand 
dollars. The thing must he done so skillfully that 
the fellow who gets bitten won’t ever he certain. We 
can do a thing of that kind, can’t we, Mr. Cobb?” 

“Up there we can,” said Cobb with a laugh. “That 


THIS IS VERY GOOD ORE. 


Ill 


rock is about as near gold rock as you see it even where 
there is gold. It is to plant a little at the best spots, 
and then wait for a good rain.” 

Mr. Benjamin Dodge looked all about in the sun- 
shine. His soul seemed to be urging him to get out of 
the sun. It was too bright. 

“Come into the parlor,” he said. 


CHAPTER II. 


A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 

OHN DALTON had been as little prosperous 
in his love affairs as in his efforts to make 
money. Julia Gordon loved John with a 
genuine affection, and would not long have with- 
stood him had he thought it wise to urge her into 
marriage. But Julia’s parents were a good deal 
influenced by Dalton’s comparative poverty, and did 
whatever they could in indirect ways to discourage 
his suit. John had reckoned the matter over care- 
fully again and again. He knew how uncertain 
even his situation at the bank might be. Several times 
he had saved money enough to make a good beginning. 
Once it was swept away by sickness. Once a bank 
failure and connected rascality had robbed him of a 
sum that represented the economizing of two years. 
Now again he had slowly gained a little. A fortunate 
trade had turned him a small profit, and he now had 
laid by in the bank where he worked nearly a thousand 



A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 


113 


dollars. But in John’s view of the matter this was 
nothing with which to begin married life. Julia had 
been accustomed to circumstances of comparative 
luxury, and John was proud. He could not think 
of dragging her down. He must wait. 

A few days after the episode recorded in the pre- 
vious chapter, John, walking home from his bank in the 
afternoon, met Julia. She was more radiant and 
smiling than usual. 

“Oh, you sober fellow! Good afternoon,” she said 
cheerily. “Turn about and walk home with me now. 
I have such good news. Congratulate me, can’t you?” 

“Yes, sure. I do. What is it?” laughed John. 
He thought he had never seen Julia’s eyes shine so 
beautifully. And he had long known that she had also 
a shining soul. Julia was a type of the cheerful Chris- 
tian, in fact, and a good angel generally in Collodion. 
But for the fact that John was poor, it would have 
seemed to everybody that these two fine young people 
were made especially for each other. 

“Money — money — I tell you. You never heard of 
such a thing.” 

“Guess I never did. It is about the strangest thing 
in my experience. Whose money — what money?” 


114 


ON THE WHOLE. 


“Mine of course. Aren’t you glad now? I don’t 
despise money — not I. I don’t believe in the ‘poor but 
honest’ idea. Why not be ‘rich but honest’? Well, 
you never could guess. Think of it. They wanted my 
lots in Denver for a public building and Uncle Ray- 
mond sold them for eighteen thousand dollars. Think 
of that, you discouraged fellow! Eighteen thousand 
dollars! Here’s Uncle Raymond’s check.” 

“Whew! That’s a fortune! I do congratulate you.” 

But there was something in his tone that Julia 
could not quite fathom. She looked at him sharply, 
her face aglow. 

“You don’t do it exactly as I like, though,” she said 
softly. “I suppose you won’t have to wait now, will 
you?” She laughed and dropped her eyes, slowing down 
in the walk. 

“It isn’t my money,” said John with a sigh. 

“Don’t be a foolish boy, now,” said Julia, tightening 
her grasp on John’s arm and looking up with a con- 
fident smile. “It is our money — which is a thousand 
times better. I’m twenty-two, am I not? What are you 
sighing for, I wonder?” 

“You are an angel,” said John slowly. “I suppose 
I’ll have to take you.” 


A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 


115 


“Wretch! But it’s good enough for you. I’m glad 
you are sensible, though. I wonder when?” 

“Oh! I am to name the day, am I?” laughed John. 
“Suppose we say to-morrow then?” 

“Or this afternoon? You are so slow. Let’s go right 
up to the parsonage now.” 

She looked up at him and laughed like a child. 

“I’m agreed to that. Come on.” 

“Stop, stop, you previous fellow! I actually believe 
you would.” 

“Of course I would. I am mercenary. If I am 
to marry you for that eighteen thousand, I ought to 
do it quick.” 

“That’s a slander and a shame. If anybody says 
that, it will be real mean. Well — if you want to call 
it Christmas then — that is only five months away, — ” 

“Thanksgiving is only four,” said John. 

Suffice it to say that they came to an agreement 
about it, though John still felt an uneasy sense of hu- 
miliation that he was to be more or less pecuniarily 
dependent upon Julia. But he walked back to his 
home happier than he had ever been before in his life. 

As he entered the cheery sitting-room where the 
afternoon sun made all the walls and curtains bright, 


116 


ON THE WHOLE. 


he felt something unpleasant and incongruous in the 
presence of a figure that sat by the table and who rose 
up as he entered. 

“Mr. Dalton ?” asked the stranger. He was a 
rugged and rather dark-browed man, with deep-set and 
beady eyes, his face well-bearded and his hair worn 
shaggy in his neck. 

“Yes. Do you wish to see me?” answered Dalton 
with his usual directness. He was taking in the strang- 
er with mental notes. 

He bade him be seated and, going out to greet 
his mother and attend to a few small matters, he 
soon returned, proffering the stranger a glass of iced 
lemonade. The stranger was nervous apparently, 
and shifted about a good deal on the edge of his 
chair. 

“I am a stranger in the town. I heard of a trout 
stream up in the hills. I have a few days here. Some- 
body told me you fish a little. I came over to see if 
you could fit me out, and show me the water. Perhaps 
you could take an hour yourself.” 

John thought of the matter a little. He saw no 
reason why he should not accommodate the man. He 
was respectful and evidently had no ulterior designs. 


A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 


117 


He explained to Dalton farther that he was doing some 
prospecting not far away for Denver parties. 

John got out his flies and some rods and reels; and 
lent the stranger, who called himself Mr. Bell, some 
gum boots and a cap, and they started off together. 

“I hear of some large trout that a man down at the 
hotel took from a brook in Dodge’s tract near a hill 
they call Crowfoot. Is that where we are going?” asked 
the stranger as they left the house. John knew that 
there were trout in the brook named. 

“I was going to another stream, but the one you 
name is nearer. We’ll try if you like.” 

How this stream ran through the rocky slope, a 
tract of some three hundred acres, which had been the 
subject of conversation between Mr. Dodge and Mr. 
Sinks. 

They reached it two hours before sundown, and 
soon had landed some of the speckled beauties that 
abound in the Colorado streams. By and by Mr. Bell 
paused from fishing and John saw him bending over 
to dislodge a boulder that lay in the bed of the brook, 
but well out of the water. Being curious to see what 
he might have found, John went forward over the 
stones to get nearer. 


118 


ON THE WHOLE. 


“See here, Mr. Dalton!” cried Bell with a low ex- 
clamation of satisfaction. He held np a small piece of 
ore sparkling with yellow particles. 

“That’s the genuine stuff, or I’m no prospec- 
tor,” he said in a tone of apparently suppressed ex- 
citement. 

“If it is. Uncle Dodge will be in luck again,” re- 
plied Dalton taking the ore in his hand. “Where did 
it come from?” 

“Come from? Why, man, look all around you. 
Did anybody ever see more signs of gold anywhere. 

If this isn’t a clue that leads to a lode not far above 
here I’m no prospector. See here — and there!” 

Mr. Bell, speaking thus, with great excitement in 
his manner that could not be detected as simulated, 
proceeded to turn up from the bed of the brook two 
or three more of the ore fragments. 

“These are detached bits that have worked down 
the stream. This is placer business, and there may be 
more of it deeper in this bed. But the chances are 
that the gold is mostly in the rock farther up. If it 
is half as good as these pieces the man that owns this 
claim is rich — rich.” 

Dalton was soon excited himself, and wondered if 


A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 


119 


his uncle might not think this information valuable 
enough to sell him a small interest in the find. 

“If your Uncle Dodge doesn’t catch on to this too 
quick, I don’t know why we shouldn’t make a spec’ 
ourselves. Let’s go down and talk it over. I can’t fish 
after this.” 

Dalton wanted to remain and search a little longer, 
but Mr. Bell seemed more inclined to go, and to- 
gether they went back talking over the find as they 
went. 

Before they parted for the night, Mr. Bell promised 
to come the next day and go with Dalton to the hill, 
when they could make a more thorough inspection of 
the ore and dig a little for samples. 

Within three days the skillful agent of the salting 
scheme — for that was the true character of Bell — had 
fired Dalton to a fever about the discovery. But Dal- 
ton, after a long struggle with the temptation, con- 
quered his desire to take advantage of his Uncle 
Dodge’s ignorance. 

“It is only what he would do in the same circum- 
stances,” Dalton said to himself again and again. But 
he remembered his professions to his Lord, and his 
character, that must not be stained by the suspicion 


120 


ON THE WHOLE. 


of sharpness, and at last cautiously approached his 
uncle with the matter. 

“Pish!” said Dodge, pretending to make little of it. 
“I have heard all about that hill. They do find some 
ore there, hut I have no faith in it. Sometime we may 
strike something, but I have had it prospected thor- 
oughly. Still, I wouldn’t care to sell it cheap. We 
all live in hope, John.” 

“But Mr. Bell declares it is a bonanza, Uncle.” 

“Why doesn’t he buy it then?” 

“He would buy half, I think.” 

“Well, if anybody wanted it for forty thousand 
dollars I would let it go. Otherwise I will keep it. 
If there really is a lode up there I shall run on it some 
day.” 

Dalton carried this to Bell. Bell swore at him 
mildly for giving the find away to Dodge. 

“He will put the price up now, of course, until it 
will be a risk to buy. If your bank president now, Mr. 
Boss, would put in that fifty thousand, or forty thou- 
sand, for you — can’t you get him up to see the ore?” 

The bank president! This was the reason for work- 
ing Dalton. The sharpers well knew John had no 
money but if they could use him as the decoy for turn- 


A CEANCE TO BE RICE. 


121 


ing in the money they knew Mr. Ross had, there was 
success in store for them. 

But Dalton had revolving in his head a different 
scheme. He was, however, too well-balanced to run 
into anything actually blindfold. He sent to Denver 
on his own account for a prospector. Mr. Sampson 
was a good prospector, but a bad neglecter of affairs. 
Bell got hold of him and hoodwinked him. He at last 
told Dalton that the hill was as full of gold as it could 
stick. He took John up and dug out before his eyes 
some more of the “salt.” 

To Mr. Sampson’s credit it may be said that he did 
not know that it was “salt,” and he really thought he 
saw every sign of gold rock. 

John carried the ore down to Julia, and told how 
the affair stood to date. 

“If I had forty thousand dollars,” he said gloomily n I 
have no doubt whatever that my fortune would be made.” 

They talked it over together a long time. They got 
still another prospector to look the hill over, and this 
one told them that though he had found one or two 
pieces of gold ore, and these evidently foreign, there 
was a good chance always of striking gold in that kind 
of rock. 


122 


ON THE WHOLE. 


Meanwhile Dodge willing to hasten matters by a lit- 
tle lie came down and announced that he had probably 
closed a deal to sell the land to parties from Pueblo. 

John Dalton groaned. He felt that the opportune 
ty of his lifetime was about to slip away. He suggested 
to his uncle that he might find a way to do something 
himself if he had a little time. At last Mr. Dodge 
promised not to close with the Pueblo parties for an- 
other three days, but added that their offer was good 
enough so that it would take fifty thousand instead of 
forty to buy the land. John went home still groam- 
ing. In the evening he went up to consult with his 
pastor. 

“It is the way of this world, Mr. Tellgood,” said 
John. “Uncle Dodge has money enough, therefore he 
can get fifty thousand dollars for a lot of rocks. I have 
nothing, therefore I cannot take a sure chance of mak- 
ing a fortune.” 

“Is it so absolutely sure?” 

John showed him some of the ore and told him 
what the prospectors had said. 

“Nevertheless, I would not myself take the risk of 
paying fifty thousand dollars for unknown chances of 
gold that is still mostly to be unearthed.” 


A CHANCE TO BE RICH. 


123 


Dalton thought Mr. Tellgood too cautious. He 
broached the matter next day to Mr. Ross. The hank 
president was interested in John, and he put consid- 
erable faith at once in the gold story. In a day or two 
John had him sufficiently excited to visit the stream 
where, sure enough, they found two or three pieces 
of Sink’s salt. Dalton introduced Bell, and the latter 
soon showed his knowledge of prospecting, and con- 
vinced Mr. Ross that the hill was rich in ore. It some- 
times takes but little to fool even the shrewdest of 
business men. Mr. Ross went back, and the day after 
called Dalton to him and offered to advance one-half 
to buy the land. He did not wish to speculate in min- 
ing claims himself, but he would lend the money to 
Dalton and take a mortgage back at low interest. 

John told Julia of this with tears in his eyes. Still 
he was as far as ever from being able to grasp this 
fortune. But Julia, hearing that Mr. Ross had actually 
endorsed the scheme and would put money into it, re- 
membered that she had eighteen thousand dollars her- 
self. In fact, with money she had in the bank in her 
own name, she had more than that sum. Dalton 
shrank from this, but in the end he came to it. Within 
three weeks of the time when Bell came upon the scene. 


124 


ON THE WHOLE. 


John Dalton, with the money of Mr. Ross and Julia 
Gordon, had bought the salted mine. Mr. Dodge took 
the money without despising himself, and reflected that 
it was not his fault if folks did not know what they 
were buying. 


CHAPTER III. 


SALT. 

OHN’S land was partly timbered, and would 
have sold on the day he went fishing with 
Bell for a possible five thousand dollars. As 
a matter of fact, no gold had thus far been taken 
from it except that which Sinks and Cobb had 
skillfully placed there. The rascality had succeeded 
apparently without a hitch. The rascals divided 
the proceeds, confident that Dalton could never ex- 
pose them. Mr. Benjamin Dodge went to his pew 
in the church on the following Sunday in a com- 
fortable frame of mind, and enjoyed the service 
very well except some parts of the sermon. He knew 
that he had made a clear thirty thousand dollars out of 
a piece of business that would not have stood long in 
the light, but he even consoled his remnants of a con- 
science by the reflection he had not actually done the 
salting, and that any way it was the business of a pur- 
chaser to look up things for himself. He knew pretty 



126 


ON TEE WHOLE. 


well the sources of the money. He guessed that the 
greater part probably came from Mr. Eoss who could 
afford the loss, and that his nephew, who had little to 
lose, would only learn a lesson in business from the 
affair. 

Mr. Tellgood’s conversations recently with Dalton 
had given the minister some thoughts on the prosper- 
ity of the wicked, and several times the reflections from 
the pulpit made Mr. Dodge inwardly squirm. But he 
only smiled incredulously when the preacher declared 
that sharpness and false dealing were continually over- 
reaching themselves, and reacting against the guilty. 
He pitied Mr. Tellgood as a very impracticable man 
who did not know the ways and doings of the busi- 
ness world. In Mr. Dodge’s opinion, sharpness was 
the chief virtue of the business life. He regarded the 
minesalting experiment as a mere trick of the trade. 

John Dalton was sobered and made anxiously 
thoughtful by the realization that he had actually com- 
pleted his investment. He was at once assailed with 
some horrible fear that after all he might have led 
his friends into a disastrous speculation. But again 
and again he consoled himself by recalling the earnest 
manner of Mr. Bell and the confidence of Mr. Eoss af- 


SALT. 


127 


ter seeing the gold for himself. There could be no 
doubt after all, reasonably, that he had a rich proper- 
ty. He alternated between the high hopes of an enthu- 
siast and the fears of natural caution for several days, 
while he was preparing to begin his mining in earnest. 
Julia shared with him in both his hopes and fears, 
though with her the fear came soon to be uppermost. 
She did not like it that Bell had left the town almost 
immediately after the bargain had been closed. There 
was a vague intuition of some underhand business in 
her mind, such as fine-natured women are sure to en- 
tertain when there is a ground for it. 

The mining began. It was at first an attempt to 
trace the placer gold up the stream where the pros- 
pectors believed a shaft might reveal a rich lode in the 
hill. They found in this way several small pieces of 
Sink's salt. Every time they struck one of these a cer- 
tain old miner, Mr. Reed, who was employed in the 
work, examined it closely, and looked puzzled. At last, 
when no more of these were found, he called Dalton 
aside one day and asked him who sold him the land. 

Dalton told him the whole story. 

“It looks to me,” said Reed hesitatingly, “as if you 
had been fooled. But I can’t be sure.” 


128 


ON THE WHOLE. 


“Fooled? What do you mean?” Dalton stopped 
work and stared at Reed with a growing horror in his 
heart. 

“Well, as I said, I can’t he sure. This gold may 
be indigenous, but it may not be. The rock is a good 
deal like the native rock — that’s so. But some of these 
pieces are in queer places. This one now — well — if it 
had been here thousands or even hundreds of years 
where I found it, it would have rested either on a clay 
bed or a rock bottom. There is gold enough in it to 
carry it down until it would strike one or the other. 
See? Very well. Where did I find it? Why, about half 
way down through that sand layer, under a small boul- 
der. Besides, the sand is not made from this kind of 
rock, and this sort of ore would not get into the midst 
of it naturally. At least that is the way I look at it.” 

“What do you mean?” asked Dalton, his face drawn 
now, and his lips pale with dread. 

“Salt,” said Reed in a low tone. 

Dalton groaned and laid down his measuring-rod. 
He had been marking out some calculations along the 
stream. 

“But it doesn’t follow that there is no gold here,” 
said Reed, with a twinkle of his eye. “I wouldn’t give 


SALT. 


129 


it up yet. This is a good place. Let’s keep on looking, 
say I” 

But Dalton’s heart was gone for that day, and he 
went home and spent the afternoon in misery in his 
own room. 

For ten days more his three men worked along 
the brook, but not an atom of ore was found. Then 
Dalton was obliged to tell Mr. Ross what Reed had 
said. 

“And the deviltry can’t be proved either, I sup- 
pose,” he said. “I am to blame for losing your money. 
It is bitter as death.” And he thought how exceeding- 
ly greater yet was the bitterness of having lost Julia’s 
money also. 

But Julia came now to the front like the heroine 
she was. She consoled Dalton in a hundred ways, and 
laughed at the loss of her money. 

“We weren’t meant to be rich, dear,” she said to 
John. “And now when we are married at Thanks- 
giving you won’t be tempted to accuse yourself again 
of marrying me for my money.” 

She would not give him the least chance to sug- 
gest any postponement of their wedding, although 
when Gordon, pater, learned of the failure of the min- 


130 


ON THE WHOLE. 


ing and the loss of his daughter’s money he made it 
very uncomfortable for the young people. 

John Dalton felt that his misfortunes were almost 
more than he could bear, notwithstanding the sympa- 
thy of the community. He refused point blank to 
recognize his uncle any longer, and this had its effect. 
Somehow the atmosphere became different in Collo- 
dion, to the speculator. Things grew perceptibly chilly, 
and even there was a sound, hardly suppressed, from 
the small boys when he passed by. He knew they were 
saying ‘salt’ to him. The trick could not be proved — 
nobody would ever prosecute him — but Collodion 
would have its way of inflicting punishment. 

About three days before John and Julia were to 
be married, John was sitting gloomily at home, think- 
ing that with all his approaching happiness in the 
love of Julia it would be a season of mingled fortune 
after all, in which the bitter would be almost as great 
as the sweet, when the door opened and, without ring- 
ing to warn of his appearance, Bell the prospector came 
in upon him. 

Dalton rose up with a frown on seeing this man 
whom he now believed to be one of the swindlers who 
had robbed him. 


SALT. 


131 


“Good evening, Mr. Dalton. Sorry to find you 
so down at the mouth. Like to talk with you a little.” 

“I do not know that I have anything to say to you,” 
said John freezingly. 

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Dalton. Would 
feel the same myself. But Fve been haunted a deal 
by that mine matter.. I saw plainly that you are a 
likely young fellow, and thought it too bad to have 
you beaten in that way. But I’ve come to help you 
most likely. Can’t say how it will turn, hut I think 
I’m on the right track.” 

Dalton looked at him curiously. He observed that 
Bell seemed to be suffering from some physical ailment. 
His dark eyes were more sunken than ever, and he 
was sallow and thin. 

“Yes,” he went on slowly; “fact is, I’ve been sick, 
and it made me think. In the fever I saw you a thou- 
sand times. I saw something else, too, and I couldn’t 
rest until I came back here and found out. I think I 
have found out.” 

“Found out what?” asked John more kindly. The 
man’s condition made him sympathetic. Even an ene- 
my in suffering was to be kindly treated. 

“Found out that probably you are the richest man 


132 


ON THE WHOLE. 


in this region. I don’t charge anything for letting you 
know it. It’s the mine. Those that tried to fool you 
were fools themselves. If you can get me a horse sad- 
dled I will ahow you.” 

John Dalton started up in hot excitement. 

“Do you mean — ?” he paused, remembering that 
Bell was one of the men who had fooled him before. 

“Yes. It’s there, or I don’t know gold. Get me 
the horse.” 

Dalton, dazed and almost dizzy, walked to the near- 
est stable and returned soon with a horse, saddled for 
Mr. Bell’s use. 

He could say nothing while together they went 
along through the pleasant November sunshine, up the 
rough road leading to Dalton’s land. 

“I was up here yesterday,” said Bell, as they came 
to the bank of the trout stream where they had fished 
together on their first visit. “It was all exactly as it 
appeared to me in my fever. I had to come now — if 
I hadn’t I would have to die condemned. That is 
what I heard all the time I was getting out of the fever, 
‘die condemned!’ But if it is all right here I shall 
get peace, now.” 

He smiled wanly and weakly, but his eyes burned 


SALT. 


133 


with a new light as he went on. Dalton saw there was 
power in the spiritual realities that had taken hold of 
this sick man’s conscience. He could not answer, but 
followed Bell up the gorge of the stream. At length 
they reached a lateral valley where a tiny rivulet flowed 
down a steep, ledgy slope, splashing over the rock and 
emptying itself into the larger water at their feet. 
Here they turned abruptly, and followed up the course 
of the rivulet, until they came to a level, sandy plateau. 
Along the edge of this where it lay thinly above the 
rock, there were marks where the sand had recently 
been turned up. 

“I dug these holes,” said Bell, his eyes sparkling. 


Look at the rock here.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


“ON THE WHOLE.” 

HEN Mr. Benjamin Dodge had paid off the 
mortgage under his agreement, the land that 
had. been worth about five thousand dollars, 
netted him besides over twenty-five thousand. The 
remainder of the ill-gotten money went to the con- 
federates, Bell getting a few hundred for his share 
as a hired accessory. This money was not immedi- 
ately required by Mr. Dodge, and so he thought 
that he might use it in certain speculations. The 
Cripple Creek gold craze was at that time beginning 
to rage, and Mr. Dodge went across the mountains 
to examine into certain stocks that were offered for 
sale. He fell in there with a builder from Chicago, 
who showed him that he could buy houses in such a 
way as to make an enormous percentage on his money. 
After investigating a little he sank his whole available 
fund in the new houses that the builder showed him. 
There were thirty small cottages, renting at a fabulous 



ON THE WHOLE. 


135 


figure. This investment pleased him so much that 
he went home and raised all the money he could bor- 
row on his property here and there, to buy more real 
estate in Cripple Creek. He was so busy for three 
months completing these transactions that he forgot 
the insurance. 

But he reckoned that his sharp trick upon his 
nephew and upon those who had backed him, had 
been about the most fortunate transaction of his 
whole speculative career. He believed that the feel- 
ing against him in Collodion would abate after awhile, 
and meantime he carried his head as high as he 
could. 

He heard that the wedding of his nephew to Julia 
Gordon had taken place on Thanksgiving, and won- 
dered what they expected to live on. He remarked, 
now and then as he had opportunity, that Dalton was 
“a good fellow but not much for getting along.” But 
a few days after the wedding, to which, it is needless 
to say, he received no invitation, Mr. Dodge happened 
to have occasion to pass across Dalton’s land. To his 
surprise he heard sounds from the new mining opera- 
tions and went up to see what was going on. He came 
upon Dalton presently, sitting on a rock and directing 


136 


ON THE WHOLE. 


his superintendent about getting some machine drills 
in position. 

“What’s up now, John? Found the stuff have you?” 

John had not spoken to his uncle for weeks, but 
Mr. Dodge affected a good deal of cordiality, willing 
to renew friendly relations for his own benefit if he 
could. He believed that John had set the town against 
him, and hoped his nephew would feel better by this 
time. 

John slowly rose to his feet and faced Dodge. He 
felt that he must be a Christian, even in his aversion 
that rose up against this man, who had tried to .ruin him. 

“I am working the claim, sir,” he answered with 
considerable coldness in his manner. '“We are finding 
some ore.” 

“Want ter know! I always thought there was some. 
You stick to it well. There was talk, I heard, that you 
had about give up. Hope you are not sinking money 
for small hopes. As I told you at the first, I never had 
the faith to work the thing myself. You took your 
own risk when you bought. I had half a notion those 
fellows that thought there was so much in it were set- 
tin’ up a story. Still, the land was about wuth what 
you give, for the chances in it, and the timber.” 


ON THE WHOLE. 


137 


“I find no fault,” said John. “I think I shall see 
my money back eventually .” 

“You will?” exclaimed Dodge, with evident incred- 
ulity, and a good deal of curiosity in his tones. 

“The prospectors who deceived me are not to be 
thanked for that though,” says John. “I’ve an idea 
you know something about that, sir.” 

“They deceived you, did they? Well I allow they 
were slick. I didn’t take all the stock in the world in 
their story, as I plainly told you. But if Ross was bent 
on believing them, why shouldn’t I get my price? Of 
course I knew ’twas Ross at the bottom.” 

This barefaced manner of turning away his guilt 
disgusted John, and made him a trifle angry. But he 
controlled himself and said gently: 

“If anybody did wrong in the matter, it is not for 
me to sit in judgment. But the gold I bought was 
salt, put there to deceive.” 

“You don’t tell! Ef I’d a known that, like ehough 
I'd a prosecuted the whole lot of ’em. So you an’ Ross 
got bit, did ye? It’s rough I allow.” 

“On the contrary, I expect to he the richest man 
in Collodion, on account of this mine.” 

“You do? Well, its a good thing to have sand, John. 


138 


ON THE WHOLE. 


I hope you’ll get there. Why don’t you dig down 
in the gulch along the brook. The prospectors all 
have said that’s where the gold’ll be struck if there 
is any.” 

Dodge had no faith at all in the large forecast of 
John. His nephew was so calm, and seemingly uncon- 
cerned in his talk about the claim that Dodge thought 
he knew the case. John was merely digging away with 
the hope of finding something some day. He reasoned 
it out that Eoss was sinking some more money after his 
first investment, in the hare hope of taking out some- 
thing in the end. 

While they were talking, John’s foreman, who had 
been overseeing some last washing in a sluice that had 
been built on the main stream, came up with a fine 
sieve in his hand and accosted John. 

"Anything new?” asked John, seeing perhaps a 
chance to strike his little blow, that the human nature 
in him suggested. 

<f Yes, Mr. Dalton. That streak that Mr. Bell point- 
ed out this morning is a stunner. Look here.” 

Dodge bent over the sieve. It did not require any 
experience with sluice mining to enable him to see. 
There, all over the bottom of the sieve, lay like gleam- 


ON THE WHOLE. 


139 


ing jewels the yellow ore that the men had washed out 
of the surface soil of the plateau. 

Dodge gave a little groan and sat down. 

“You can see for yourself/’ said John. “This is 
what I have been doing every day for some weeks. It 
is my land. You meant to swindle me, Uncle Dodge. 
You merely cheated yourself. I was offered two hun- 
dred thousand dollars for this claim, this very morn- 
ing.” 

There could not have been a harder way to strike 
Mr. Dodge. Until he dies it will rankle in him — this 
realization that he lost this fortune by his own treach- 
ery. 

He stammered, stared, said something about looking 
into the papers, and finally went away. 

When Cripple Creek went up in flames the unin- 
sured houses of Mr. Dodge went with it, a total loss. 
He came home from the smoking ruins, confronted by 
overdue mortgages that he had made to raise money 
for these investments, and in a few weeks it was known 
in Collodion that Benjamin Dodge was a ruined man. 

But the ruin of his fortune was nothing at all com- 
pared with his pitiable condition in Collodion opinion. 
There was not one friend left to pity him. The uni- 


140 


ON THE WHOLE. 


versal voice of the town was to the effect that he had 
deserved all his ill fortune. Religious people did not 
hesitate to call it the justice of God. 

John Dalton alone offered his uncle assistance, and 
this he was not above taking. He even reminded Dal- 
ton that on one occasion he had lent his nephew a small 
sum to help him out. Dalton remembered both the 
security and the usury that the speculator had exacted, 
but said nothing. 

“I have tried to be a Christian, Mr. Tellgood,” 
John said to his pastor, when in the springtime they 
again sat one day under the elms. “But I have not 
succeeded. In the first place I complained of divine 
providence, and for awhile also I laid up a mean grudge 
against Uncle Dodge.” 

“But you have learned the way of the Lord,” said 
the minister. “And besides, the experiment is not 
finished yet. You, who thought that the money 
ought to be in better hands than it often is — 
you have a chance to show what you can do with 
money.” 

It is a pleasure to record that John Dalton stood 
this hard test. The salted mine was the source of con- 
tinual streams of benevolence in Collodion, where Dal- 


ON THE WHOLE. 


141 


ton and his wife became very shortly the leaders in 
every good work. 

“The world isn’t ordered so very unjustly after all, 
John/’ said his pastor to Dalton as they walked home 
from church one day. Mr. Tellgood had just been 
preaching on Life’s Inequalities, with various pointed 
allusions that his hearers applied with considerable 
acuteness. 

“It is all right ‘on the whole/” answered John. 


THE END. 




















% 
















THE AVENGING BROOK. 





THE AVENGING BROOK. 


CHAPTER I. 


M 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 

still flows on with a song, babbling and mur- 
muring and splashing against the rocks that 
rear above its rippling level, telling over and 
over to me the story that I now tell to you. 
The leafy branches reflect themselves in the still 
pool at the foot of the hill, where the shy trout 
darts and hides when the approaching stranger casts 
a footfall on the hank. It flows through the shade 
of wooded slopes, leaping and dashing down the 
hillside to the lower lands, over a rocky bed and 
confined between rough and craggy banks. Then, be- 
yond the pool, it creeps out into the wide green mea- 
dows, where it winds its crooked course down into the 
other forests far away, and is lost to our view and ac- 
quaintance in the mysterious distances beyond the hazy 


146 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


horizon. In the springtime, when the snows melt, it 
becomes a wild torrent that roars fiercely along with a 
foamy face, showing its tumult angrily until stilled in 
the level of the wide pool below. All summer it grows 
milder and more caressing in its melody, liquid and 
slumbrous, until its murmur is merged with the rustle 
of the sere leaves that fall from the whispering oaks 
and lie on its dark bosom. And when the winter frosts 
seize its waters, it makes strange gleaming shapes on 
the sides of the rocks in its bed, and a fringe of ragged 
ice fantastically moulded by the contour of the banks 
skirts either side, until it spreads across the pool below, 
to form a solid black surface where the village boys 
glide in their winter sport until the deeper snows bury 
it from sight and sound. 

Years ago the dwellers in Penesee called this bab- 
bling stream Sweetwater Brook. Its waters then were 
fed from many springs that welled out from the 
swampy hollow, fringed by hills that lay farther up, 
beyond the forest. The hamlet of Penesee, lying a 
half mile to the east of Sweetwater Brook, was a little 
straggling neighborhood by courtesy called a village, 
where was a white spired church, a post office and sev- 
eral little stores, not to name the smithy, and the card- 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


147 


ing mill whose wheels were turned in spring time only 
by the swollen current of Penesee Brook, that flows 
into the same meadows where Sweetwater meanders 
along, and where after many approaches, curving along 
in separate channels like coquetting lovers, the two 
streams flow together before entering the far away 
forest. 

A dusty country highway passes over the ridge from 
Penesee and leads down the slope to Sweetwater where, 
a little way below the pool, a rustic bridge spans the 
stream. Continuing thence the road climbs the other 
slope and winds up a long rise of the land until it tips 
over the crest and is lost to view towards the setting 
sun. 

Upon this bridge two men stood on a summer day 
many years ago, conversing together in the sunshine. 

“ ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof 
the Book says. And he promises it to his people, 
doesn’t he?” 

Matthew Eand, looking down into the calm water 
that flowed sluggishly under the bridge, spoke with 
earnestness, and there was a certain ring in his tones 
that relieved it of every trace of cant. He was a young 
man, full of vigorous health, and sturdy as one of the 


148 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


young oaks that cast its shadows in the water near 
him. 

“The parson is a good preacher,” said the other, 
“and it’s all right enough for them that’s prosperous. 
But things are not all smooth for the Lord’s people. 
Then, when you look at the other side of it — well — I 
can’t say as I agree with him there either. He said 
that a man’s sins are sure to bring their own judgment. 
It’s all right fer a theory, Matt, but it doesn’t work 
out.” 

George Haley, smoking away at a brown clay pipe 
that was in very fair correspondence with his coarse 
farmer’s attire, blew out a cloud of smoke from his lips 
and watched it curl up into the sun contentedly. 
George’s farm adjoined Matthew’s, and both lay along 
the eastern side of Sweetwater Brook. They were close 
friends, and on this Sunday afternoon they were talk- 
ing together as they often did, upon the morning ser- 
mon at the little Penesee meeting-house. They were 
both religious men, but Haley’s religiousness had a 
shrewd practical side that accounted for his general 
prosperity perhaps. 

“I stick by the Book,” said Matthew sturdily. 
“When it says that a man’s sin will find him out, I 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


149 


like to think it will. It may not all at once but there 
is many a case where it has. The parson only preached 
what is there, plain and true, George. But I admit that 
God’s ways are past finding out. You remember the 
hymn we sing: 

God moves in a Mysterious way, 

His wonders to perform. 

“But mysterious or not, somehow he fixes it so that 
the bad will come to bad ends. If they don’t seem to, 
to us, that’s because we don’t know all about it, I 
fancy.” 

“Doesn’t many a rich man die in his bed all safe? 
It’s likely he’ll get his deserts in ’tother world — but 
not in this, Matthew, not in this. It ain’t the way of 
the world.” 

“It’s because we are blind then and don’t see it, I 
say. There are a million ways in which God works 
out his judgment that are hidden from our 
eyes, as the preacher showed us. The very stones 
are against those that do evil, and the trees and the 
earth and the running brooks. I couldn’t tell how it 
is done, but it is done. If I had Elder Down’s lan- 
guage I might get nearer to the thing. He says that 
God makes even nature and society and everything 


150 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


around us work to judge us, and that, not in some other 
world, but in this. The more I think about that the 
more I am convinced that it is so.” 

“P’raps ’tis, Matt, but I’m mighty hard to catch 
on then. Looks to me as if the rocks and the pests 
were as hard against me over there on my rocky old 
farm as if I was the worst fellow on the ridge. Mebbe 
I am, though.” 

Matthew laughed at this close application of his 
theology, and assured George that he could rest in the 
judgment of his neighbors safely, who by no means 
regarded him as a desperate character. George laughed 
too, a little, and then silence fell for a time between 
them save for the low murmur of the water and the 
piping of sparrows in the trees around them. 

Looking up presently, Matthew saw emerging from 
the trees on the hillside two men, who came slowly 
down towards the bridge through the rocky pasture. 
One of these both men recognized presently as Wilson 
Carter, a farmer who had not many years before re- 
moved to the neighborhood and who had purchased 
the land that lay to the westward of Sweetwater. The 
person with him seemed to them to be a stranger. 

“They have been fishing farther up, I suppose,” said 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


151 


George. “That man Carter has no more regard for 
Sunday than a heathen.” 

“They seem to be looking about a good deal. I 
wonder what they are up to.” 

Indeed Carter and his companion had now turned 
and ascended a small bluff that overlooked the brook, 
and standing on this they were evidently surveying the 
stream up and down. Carter seemed to be pointing 
out the surroundings to the stranger, his arm raised 
now and then, while faint sounds of their conversation 
came down to the bridge. 

“It might be somebody looking at the water power,” 
said George thoughtfully. “I’ve often heard Carter 
talk about the value of it. It seems to be a standing 
theme with him.” 

“I’ve thought a good deal about that too,” replied 
Matthew. “When father was living he used to say that 
the brook ought to be worth all the rest of the farm. 
That’s the reason he reserved it when he sold to Carter, 
I suppose. But it’s worth something only when you 
find a purchaser. It would run a half dozen mills if 
it were dammed back properly.” 

“That might help me a trifle too,” said George. 
“My land would get the How back and that would be 


152 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


worth something. You remember I sold Carter the up- 
per part of his farm opposite my west pasture. I made 
the same arrangements. I run the line four rods west 
of the brook, so as to be sure it is reserved.” 

“It is a chance for dreaming anyhow, George. 
Meanwhile I mean to make that farm of mine the best 
one in the county. Father was a hard worker, but the 
new ideas didn’t take hold of him. I mean to improve 
on all that. But they are coming down here, I see. 
Perhaps we’ll find out who Carter’s company may be.” 

As Matthew spoke, Carter and his companion started 
to walk down the hill. There was a rough cart road 
leading down along the stream, and following this the 
two men came on towards the bridge. But all at once 
Carter saw r Matthew and George and stopped in his 
tracks. Then, saying something in a low tone to his 
companion, a well dressed man of middle age whom 
they did not recognize, Carter turned aside, and fol- 
lowed by the other, struck off through the pasture 
towards his own house farther up the road. 

“That’s a little queer,” said George, looking after 
them. “Carter is quite unsocial to-day I guess. That 
fellow with him I don’t ever remember seeing before.” 

“Looks as if he didn’t want to introduce him, at 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


153 


all events. But Carter always had freaks of his own. 
He’s a queer fish.” 

“He’s an old gouge/’ responded George. “The 
way he works his men and the way he feeds ’em is a 
shame to human nature.” 

“It isn’t for me to judge my neighbor/’ said Mat- 
thew softly. 

George whistled a bar of a hymn tune and made 
no answer. He knew that Matthew was utterly sincere, 
and that he was trying to live the actual life of a sanc- 
tified Christian. Matthew had been a tough case to 
reach through all his early young manhood. He had lived 
a life, before, that was wholly above reproach, as peo- 
ple said, and always attended and supported the church. 
But about a year prior to the events of this story, Mat- 
thew had passed through the throes of a memorable 
repentance. There was no revival to incite him. It 
all came in the course of his sober, solitary thought 
and experience. And then he had cast himself out 
unreservedly upon a Christian life. He gave up his 
pipe, and took up a course of systematic giving. These 
were about all the reforms that his neighbors knew any- 
thing about, and yet everybody by and by began to say 
that a marvelous change had come over Matthew. No- 


154 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


body could tell what it was. He was no more honest 
and kind than before. He was no more constant to his 
church. But he was changed. It may have been a new 
softness in his voice and manner, a new unction in his 
friendliness. But no one doubted that something had 
happened. 

Now, with Matthew, there was a great peace of life, 
and the flow of it was not disturbed even by the pests 
and frosts and vicissitudes of his great hard New En- 
gland farm, where everyday nature showed to him her 
rugged and vexatious resistance. He ploughed and 
reaped with a smile on his face and content in his 
heart. 

“I reckon,” said George after a little, “that I ain’t 
got the grace you have. When I see a man like Carter, 
and above all, see him prosper at it and get rich like he 
has, it makes me feel wicked. And it’s all from his 
skinning every fellow he deals with, too. There’s only 
one thing about him that’s decent, and that’s the blind 
boy. They say he sets his eyes by that boy.” 

“There is good in everybody,” replied Matthew. 
“There is in Carter, of course. Maybe his affection 
for Paul may lead him out into better things yet.” 

Paul Carter was the only son and only child of Wil- 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


155 


son Carter, and blind since his birth. Carter, who was 
a cold, hard man to every other living thing, was soft 
as sunshine to this blind son. If there was a chance 
of redemption for his character and his soul it might 
be as Matthew had suggested, through this boy. 

While Matthew and George conversed, Carter and 
his stranger companion were walking up the road to 
Carter’s house, also conversing as they went. 

“Yes, sir,” Carter was saying, “I bought the lots, 
one of them three years ago, and one four years ago, 
thinking they might be of some use for pasturing. I 
have so many cattle I don’t know what to do with them. 
They overrun me.” 

Carter was a smooth-faced, thin-lipped man of 
uncertain age, rather under-statured, with light, shift- 
ing, blue-gray eyes and a rather heavy, resolute jaw. 
His face was finely wrinkled and had an almost cruel 
cast, accented by his hooked nose and rather high cheek 
bones. His hands were hardened by his early toil on 
the farm, and he still worked a good deal with his men. 
People who knew him very well said that he did this 
because he wished to be near enough to get all the work 
he could out of them. 

The stranger who had driven over from the town 


15G 


THE AVENGING BROOK . 


of Stanford, five miles down the railroad, had intro- 
duced himself as Isaac Richly. He was known by rep- 
utation to Carter as a manufacturer from one of the 
larger towns across the country. He had come pur- 
posely to inspect the water power of Sweetwater Brook. 
Some one had told him that Carter was interested in 
that subject. 

“I suppose you could give a clear title,” said Mr. 
Richly. 

“I don’t give no other kind,” answered Carter 
shortly. “But I won’t agree to keep it any length of 
time. I am having talk with other parties.” 

“It looks like the very thing I may want, if the 
price wasn’t high. It was rather queer of the former 
owners to sell that way to you. But the deeds are all 
right that you showed me. I will look them up at the 
court house when I get back.” 

“Look them up all you choose. They are recorded 
all right.” 

“They could hardly have known the value of the 
water power I should think. But of course its value 
depends on some one wanting it. The level down below 
opposite the pool would be a grand place for a mill and 
for cottages. Perhaps I could arrange with you, if I 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD . 


157 


buy, to build a few houses. They would pay. They 
could be built all the way to the bridge.” 

“If there were anything in it, p’raps.” 

“Well, I’ll take the option for thirty days at ten 
thousand and think it over. Perhaps it is as well as 
I am likely to do.” 

“Suit yourself, Mr. Richly.” 

Carter knew, with all the awakened instinct of the 
money getter, that Mr. Richly meant to buy. He re- 
gretted that he had not placed a higher price on his 
land. 

“That four rods on the east side is of no use,” said 
Richly, “except to control the water. The bank is too 
steep and rocky for building. You are sure there is 
no hitch in the matter?” 

“There’s the deeds. They speak for themselves, 
don’t they? It says, “Thence to a point four rods east 
of Sweetwater Brook to stake and stone.’ ” 

“That seems all right. I’ll glance at it again to be 
sure when we get to your house, I think.” 

“Do so. I don’t object. There’s nothing like bein’ 
certain.” 

They reached the house, a low, red brick structure 
rather poorly furnished, and flanked by two very large 


158 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


barns, where Carter’s great herds were sheltered in 
winter. 

Mr. Richly examined the deeds again that Carter 
had once shown him a few hours earlier in the day. 

“You observe it says 'east of Sweetwater Brook/ 
Mr. Richly. And then it goes on: 'Thence by a gen- 
erally southwest course on a line of the brook as it runs, 
and four rods to the east of the same to the highway, 
etc.’ That is clear, isn’t it?” 

And Carter, flushing a little, and with a strange 
glitter in his eyes, was exulting to remember that both 
George Haley and Thomas Rand, the father of Mat- 
thew Rand, when they signed these deeds, believed 
that they were signing another writing. And the 
other writing in each case was a duplicate of these, 
except that the land boundaries had stopped on the 
west side instead of the east side of Sweetwater Brook. 

Wilson Carter one day, in his own house, had per- 
petrated a fraud. The next year he had repeated 
it. In each case on a sudden pretext of going 
for a blotter, he had left the room long enough to 
change the documents that had been carefully read 
over by his victims, for those that he had waiting in 
the other apartment. And these deeds had been signed 


BY PROCESS OF FRAUD. 


159 


sealed and recorded, while those which the victims 
supposed they had signed had been consigned to the 
fire in Carter’s fireplace. And by this foul trick he ex- 
pected now to gain the price of the valuable water 
power of Sweetwater Brook. 

“You’ll find the deeds all right. But when the 
thirty days are up I’ll he free to deal elsewhere; that’s 
understood I hope. It’s a fair agreement.” 

Mr. Richly assented, and after a little more talk 
went away. 

Carter watched him out of sight beyond the brook, 
and then turning inside he said to himself grimly: 

“Those fellows will kick. All right, let ’em.” 


CHAPTER II. 


WITHOUT NATURAL, AFFECTION. 

F ever a sin were committed slickly it was this 
which Wilson Carter had done. The original 
deeds were long since consumed to ashes and 
blown to the winds. Ho one on earth had seen. There 
was no way to detect him unless he should he foolish 
enough to betray his secret. The deeds that were really 
signed were legal and complete. The boundaries speci- 
fied in them were too clear to leave any doubt as to the 
limits of the property conveyed. They had never been 
tampered with, and they had each of them two good and 
reliable witnesses. Neither of the victims of the fraud 
would even be able to remember a circumstance so 
slight as Carter’s absence from the room with the deed 
in his hand for less than a minute in search of a blotter. 
And under the lapse of many months, and in the 
secret chambers of the sinner’s heart this transaction 
was buried beyond all human probability of ever being 
punished or even betrayed. 



WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


1G1 


Can God judge a sin like that? Has God any way 
to bring it shrieking out into light for a warning to 
men? 

Wilson Carter had for himself only complete satis- 
faction at the absolutely skillful manner in which he 
had outwitted the two neighbors of whom he had 
bought the land. He never regretted it while he went 
about his farming, leaving them in ignorance for the 
time being of the trick. When Thomas Hand died 
he reflected that the way was made that much easier for 
him whenever he should be ready to declare his own- 
ership of the land. He had seen to it that the stake 
and stones marking the boundary intended were well 
removed. By night, long ago, he had himself, unseen 
by mortal eye, conveyed them across the brook 
and placed them at the exact spot specified in the fraud- 
ulent deeds. And he never failed to excuse the whole 
matter when it came into his mind, with the mental 
affirmation that Thomas Rand and George Haley were 
to blame for their own loss if they failed to read the 
papers that they signed. 

The noon sun was beating down on the hay fields, 
and making the shortest of shadows under the fences 
of Carter’s farm. The workmen who had been wielding 


162 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


the scythes and forks along the wide slope of fields 
above the house, heard the welcome sound of the hoarse 
dinner horn, and dropped their implements to follow 
its invitation. Wilson Carter unhitched his horse from 
a tree under whose shade he had left it while he super- 
vised the “hands,” and without inviting anybody to 
ride with him, drove off to the house. 

“Samuel has sent down for you,” said Mrs. Carter 
as he came into the house with the usual hard frown 
on his face. 

He glanced at the table and around the room, mak- 
ing no answer. Mrs. Carter, a prim, sad, small woman, 
with a continuous look of apprehension on her face 
and in her attitude, ventured to repeat the announce- 
ment, and added: 

“He’s worse, Wilson. Hadn’t you ought to go up?” 

“He needn’t be sending in haying,” said Carter, 
seating himself before the viands. “It’s all I can do 
to keep a lazy set of men doing something if I ’tend 
to ’em. Who came?” 

“Alice. She looks dragged out. I wish we could 
help them a little — if we only could afford it.” 

“I ain’t to blame if Samuel was shiftless, I guess. 
You were always snivelling about him and his. I’d 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


163 


like to know if Fm obleeged to support ’em. Alice can 
work, same’s I have to. I ain’t got any money to waste 
on ’em. I wish you’d please to understand that, and 
once fer all.” 

He cast a look out of his sharp eyes at his wife that 
made her shrink back and drop the subject. 

Samuel Carter was a half brother to Wilson and 
a hopeless cripple. He was supported by his daughter 
Alice, a girl of sweet disposition, who had hitherto 
been able to leave him during the day, while she went 
to do sewing for any one who might be willing to em- 
ploy her. They lived in one of Wilson Carter’s houses, 
an old, tumble-down cottage not worth in money more 
than a year’s rental which they paid for its use. Sam- 
uel, the invalid was able up to this time to wheel him- 
self about in a chair in and out of the cottage and 
around the rooms. He had many times sent for his 
brother to come and see him in his loneliness and fee- 
bleness, but Wilson Carter had in his heart no sympa- 
thy nor love for the sick man, and rarely came to the 
cottage except to collect the monthly rent. On these 
occasions he sometimes inquired coldly for his brother’s 
health, and occasionally expressed the hope that he 
would improve. Samuel, who was a rather garrulous 


164 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


and affectionate person, felt greatly hurt at this brusque 
treatment, and Alice noticed that Wilson’s visits were 
invariably followed by a lower state of her father’s 
health. 

Wilson Carter ate his midday meal, which was half 
done when his men came to join him, in silence. He 
usually ate so, unless he had some cross word of fault- 
finding to utter. When he was through himself he 
always contrived to have some sly word for the benefit 
of his employes about the necessity of hurrying the 
work. It was known by everybody who worked for him 
that he was a hard task-master. Every minute of day- 
light in which work was not briskly progressing he be- 
grudged, and did not hesitate to use his sharp tongue 
when he thought any man was doing less than his share 
in the field. 

When he had started them off and had satisfied 
himself that they were all at work, he returned to the 
house to take his customary mid-day nap. He did not 
disdain to favor himself to this extent, especially as it 
rendered him fresh enough to enable him to go out 
later into his hayfield and outwork his laborers, as a 
spur to them. 

On this day as he came back to the house he noticed 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


165 


the doctor’s gig at the door, and presently saw Doctor 
Haswell himself coming out of the front gate. 

“Get in and drive up with me/’ said the doctor. 
“Samuel is sinking fast. He can’t live a great while, 
I fear.” 

Carter fidgeted and hesitated. 

“I can’t very well,” he said sulkily. “But you drive 
on, and mebbe I’ll get up there a little later.” 

The doctor sniffed and left him abruptly without 
another word. He thought he did not remember any 
such instance of cold-blooded indifference. 

Carter went into the house, muttering and frown- 
ing. 

“It is about Samuel,” he said to his wife. “But I’ll 
take my nap, and then if I feel like it — . I hope he 
won’t die in the midst of my haying though.” 

And while he took his nap, up in the little cottage 
there waited a feeble, dying man, who now and then 
turned a little on his pillow and asked with a longing 
look in his eyes: 

“Has Wilson come? He is the only relative in the 
world, ’ cept you, Alice. Look out an’ see if he’s 
coming.” 

The thin hands lying on the cushioned arms of the 


1G6 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


reclining chair moved slowly about as if searching for 
some grasp of comfort from a stronger hand. 

"He’ll be along soon, I guess, father. Take the 
cordial now and perhaps you will sleep some more.” 

Alice, a pale, slim, delicate girl with wide, wist- 
ful, blue eyes, gave her father the cordial, glancing 
through the half curtained window down the car- 
riage lane hoping her uncle might be coming. She 
felt almost hatred in her gentle heart towards this 
hard-natured relative, who for years had allowed 
her father to live here in suffering without a word 
of sympathy or a single manifestation of helpful- 
ness. For her part she almost wished he might 
not come. 

"Perhaps he won’t come at all,” complained the 
sick man. "Perhaps he has forgotten me entirely. 
Can’t you send again for him. I don’t feel as if I 
could last a great while.” 

"The doctor said he would perhaps be up later,” 
said Alice, evasively. She had caught something of 
the physician’s skepticism as to the probability, and her 
father felt that she was uncertain. 

But he turned a little towards the open window and 
said no more. He felt with keenest pain the utter de- 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


167 


sertion of the only man who might have given him a 
brother’s comfort in this hour of his extremity. 

As the sun lowered westward it began to shine 
across the window sill and creep into the room. The 
sick man watched it dreamily as it fell upon the red 
petals of a bunch of roses that Alice had gathered in 
the morning and placed there for him to look at. As 
he lay thus looking out into the hazy afternoon sun- 
shine, a shadow was suddenly interposed, and the sick 
man said feebly but hopefully: 

“See if that isn’t Wilson. I thought he would 
come.” 

But the firm quick step on the turf and then on the 
threshold was not his brother’s. The comer stepped 
lightly inside. 

“I heard Mr. Carter was worse. I hope it isn’t 
true,” said Matthew Rand, coming brightly into the 
room. Alice, with a pleased flush in her face, rose to 
meet him. 

“Father is feeling a little poorly to-day,” she said, 
dropping her eyes. Alice had her dreams, and in her 
secret heart there was one that for all the world she 
would not have suffered to come out into the light. It 
was of this sturdy, fine-looking young farmer, who had 


168 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


many times shown her little attentions, and who, all 
unaware himself of what he had done, had awakened 
in her gentle, true heart a response that he had not 
tried to elicit. 

Alice glanced towards the bed, and Matthew went 
forward and took the sick man’s hand tenderly. 

"I thought it might he Wilson,” he murmured, hut 
evidently felt pleased to be remembered by the young 
farmer. “But I am glad to see you. I shan’t be here 
long to trouble anybody.” 

Then he fixed his eyes on Matthew a little, and then 
on Alice. He was thinking, perhaps, how strong and 
reliant the young farmer looked, and how well he would 
serve, if it could he, as a life support for the slim girl 
at the window. 

“I don’t know what Alice will do after I am 
gone,” he said. “But it won’t be any loss that 
way. She keeps two of us now, and she’ll only 
miss me a little while. We’re all soon forgotten, 
after we go.” 

“Don’t say that, father,” expostulated the girl 
gently. “You are only a little worse to-day. You will 
he better to-morrow.” 

“I’ll go down and tell your brother,” volunteered 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


169 


Matthew. “I guess he doesn’t know you are — are — not 
feeling so well.” 

Matthew saw at once that there would he little time 
to lose. So, answering the grateful look of the sick 
man with a cheerful word, he walked hastily to Wilson 
Carter’s. 

He found Carter in the hayfield, helping with the 
loading, and at once informed him of his errand. 

“That again? I said I’d go up when I got along 
with the work. I can’t afford to let good hay 
spoil, can I? Tell ’em I’ll be along towards sun- 
down mebbe.” 

“I think you would better come now,” said Matthew, 
concealing his contempt for this heartlessness. 

“I cal’late I know my own business best, young 
man. I believe in caring fer the living a little, too. 
Ef you ain’t nothing to do you can stay up with ’em 
until I get clear of this work, I reckon.” 

“Mr. Carter, I think your brother is dying. But 
you know best whether you wish to go.” 

“We’ve all got to die, I s’pose.” 

Matthew turned away and went sadly back to the 
cottage. 

“He will come later,” was all he could say to com- 


170 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


fort the sick man. But he exchanged with Alice a 
glance that told her the situation. 

Then he sat down by the bedside and slowly read 
fiom the words of Jesus. The invalid’s face was 
turned towards the window, and he lay very 
quiet, apparently listening. But after a little while 
they heard him whisper, and Alice bent to catch 
his words. 

“He didn’t come.” 

He was still thinking of Wilson, his brother. Mat- 
thew stopped reading and took the sick man’s hand. 
He felt it grown cold and deathlike. As the sun sank 
lower the shadow of the dread angel drew nearer. He 
spoke no more. 

About four o’clock there was a sound of wheels 
outside. This always meant that some one had come 
to the house, as the road ended there. Matthew, 
glancing from the window, saw Wilson Carter hitching 
his horse outside. 

“He has come,” he said cheerily to the sick man. 
But in a moment looking into the ghastly face on the 
cushion he saw that Samuel Carter was dead. 

He took Alice by the hand and said solemnly: “He 
is gone. He is at peace.” 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


171 


The heavy feet of Wilson sounded on the wooden 
floor. Matthew met him at the door. 

“Your brother is dead,” said Matthew coldly. 

‘Tie is? I s’pose we’ll all die,” said Wilson, 
evidently vexed to hear that he had made his 
journey in vain. “I needn’t have come just now, 
then. He owed a month’s rent, hut I s’pose I’m 
able to lose it.” 

Matthew looked in amazement at this burly, un- 
feeling figure, and said slowly: 

“I trust you will not lose the rent.” 

Then, unable to stay any longer in his presence for 
fear he might forget his manners entirely, he turned 
on his heel and went back to Alice. Wilson called 
after him: 

“I may get up again after sun down. I s’pose 
you’ll stay and look out for things. I’ll get somebody 
to set up with Samuel if I have time.” 

He remembered that one of the “hands” was a trifle 
out of health, and feared that advantage would be taken 
of his absence to shirk the work. He went off again 
without anything more in his soul than a feeling of 
regret that he had been nagged into leaving the haying 
inopportunely. 


172 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


And Matthew Rand, taking Alice by the hand, said 
with a ring of anger in his voice: 

“He’s a brute, Alice.” Then a little more softly: 
“I hope when he comes to his dying bed he will find 
more mercy, not to say decency, than he has shown to 
your poor father.” 

Alice wept gently by the couch, holding her dead 
father’s hand. 

“I will go down and send up some help. There 
are friends enough, when they know.” 

Alice thanked him, and he went off to the village on 
his errand. On the way he fell in with a neighbor who 
lived down the intervale, going to the village with a 
load of dairy products. This neighbor invited him to 
ride. About the first thing the man said, after Mat- 
thew was seated on the wagon, caused Matthew to open 
his eyes and utter a low whistle: 

“I heard that Wilson has sold the water power.” 

“I guess not,” said Matthew, smiling. “He couldn’t 
very well, seeing that it belongs to me.” 

“Sho! Don’t tell. But I had it straight. Least- 
wise he’s given an option on it. Ten thousand dollars 
they say.” 

“That’s mere talk, of course. Who told you?” 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


173 


“I don’t remember. It’s all about the village.” 

Matthew grew very thoughtful. He reasoned that 
probably Carter was improving some chance to act as 
broker and sell the property for a profit after first buy- 
ing it in. He thought to himself that he would see to 
it if there was any bargain to be made he would do the 
selling of his own property. After all, the rumor 
might have nothing at all behind it. 

But his neighbor was very specific in retailing the 
story. It was now two weeks since the visit of Mr. 
Bichly to Wilson Carter. Matthew heard again that 
day before he was through making arrangements in 
behalf of Alice, and from other sources, the same 
account of the sale of the water power. On going 
back with several friends of Alice, who had quickly 
volunteered to assist the afflicted girl and arrange for 
the funeral, he passed Carter’s house, and happening to 
see him coming out of one of the great barns Matthew 
accosted him. He was curious to learn if there might 
not be something to his advantage in the affair. He 
had often thought of the water power, and meant to 
try to sell it some day. 

“Is it true that somebody wants the brook, Mr. 
Carter?” he asked, going directly about his inquiry. 


174 


THE AVENGING BROOK . 


Carter dropped his eyes and turned a little red in 
the face. Then there was a grim, sinister shutting of 
his thin lips and he said slyly: 

“So you have heard about the selling the brook, 
have you? But I don’t have to give anybody any 
account, I guess. That’s what I bought it for.” 

“Bought what?” asked Matthew in surprise. He 
began instantly to feel a suspicion of some rascality. 

“The brook. That’s the thing you asked about, 
ain’t it? I get a handsome figure, too. I s’pose you’ve 
no objection, young man?” 

“What do you mean? Of course you know very 
well the brook doesn’t belong to you. That was 
especially reserved. I have heard my father say so 
frequently. The boundary is four rods to the west. I 
hope you haven’t been selling my property.” 

“Don’t you go too fast, Mr. Rand. I have the deeds 
and I know how they read. I don’t sell anybody’s 
property but my own.” 

Carter stood up defiantly, and looked doggedly at 
Matthew, but with some shifting of his eyes, that 
could not, after all, meet fully the frank, honest coun- 
tenance of the young farmer. 

“You don’t deny that I own that brook, I suppose?” 


WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION. 


175 


said Matthew resolutely. "If you have sold it, of 
course your conveyances will not stand.” 

"Wall, some folks know a good deal, but they don’t 
always get the better of Carter. Why do you think I 
should care to buy that old rocky pasture if it wasn’t 
to get the brook? And I got it all right.” 

"Not unless you stole it,” replied Matthew, begin- 
ning to get angry. "However, I’ll not talk with you 
now. I am going up to attend to things that better 
belong to his brother to do — for a dead man and his 
daughter. I’ll attend to this matter later.” 

"Especially the daughter, hey?” sneered Carter. 
He supposed that Matthew had some interest in Alice 
beyond his mere Christian neighborliness. Matthew 
flushed as he went off, remembering the lonely girl who 
was left in the world with only this brutal uncle to 
represent blood kinship to her. 

"The deeds must he right, or else they have been 
foully altered,” said Matthew to himself as he went on. 


CHAPTER III. 


LEFT WITH GOD. 

ILSON CARTER was careful to incur no 
expenses in the matter of his brother’s fun- 
eral,, and appeared hut once, for a few min- 
utes, at the cottage on the evening of his brother’s 
death. Matthew did not wait for this unnatural relative 
to act, hut busied himself about the matter, employing 
the undertaker and making all the necessary arrange- 
ments, assisted by the friends of the young orphan, who 
had made many while sewing in various families in 
Penesee. 

Matthew had no time until the afternoon of the 
next day to investigate the water power affair. Then 
he went to the county seat to investigate. He found 
out in short order that the sale was recorded, trans- 
ferring the property from Wilson Carter to Mr. Richly, 
at the price of ten thousand dollars. There was no full 
transcript of the deeds, but the records specified land 
and water power definitely enough to satisfy Matthew 



LEFT WITH GOD. 


177 


that Carter had actually undertaken to convey the 
brook. 

He rode hack with a flushed face, thinking what 
he should do. And all the way he was running over 
in his mind a text of Scripture that he had often quoted 
to himself. 

“If thine enemy smite thee on one cheek, turn to 
him the other also, if he compel thee to go with him a 
mile go with him twain.” 

“I wonder if that means literal submission to 
Wilson Carter’s villany? Of course it is villany. My 
father reserved the brook. That is without doubt. 
But I will sleep on it and then I must see his deeds.” 

Matthew had learned deliberation and self-control, 
and he had been thoroughly imbued with the patience 
of a Christian spirit. He did nothing more that night 
save to kneel at his bedside and pray for guidance, and 
then, with the impulse that Christ required even this 
hard thing of him, he prayed for Wilson Carter. 

The next morning he arose with peace in his heart 
and went about his work with a little hymn in his 
mouth, that he sang softly while he was milking the 
cows and arranging for the day. 

“I’ll have to let the upper field go another day. 


178 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


mother/’ he said, while he was eating breakfast. 
“Samuel Carter’s funeral is at ten, you know, and I 
ought to go up and help a little more.” 

Mrs. Rand, a saintly, gentle-faced old lady who 
loved her stalwart hoy as mothers ever do, kissed him 
and approved whatever he chose to do, saying she 
supposed the haying would turn out all right, and that 
there was a duty to he done to the neighbor as well as 
to one’s self. 

“Alice will he left all alone, Matthew,” said she 
quietly. “I wonder who will take care of the poor girl?” 

She looked at Matthew meaningly. Alice was 
rather nearer just at present to Mrs. Rand’s sympathies 
than she was even to Matthew’s. 

“She is a capable girl, mother, and will get along. 
She could manage to support her father all through 
his sickness, so I reckon she can care for herself now he 
is gone.” 

Mrs. Rand sighed softly and watched Matthew drive 
away, wondering if he would not see sometime what she 
had already seen in Alice’s eyes and manner. She 
thought how fitting it would he for these two Christian 
young people to be here together under the same roof 
with herself, while she was growing old. 


LEFT WITH GOD. 


179 


Wilson Carter managed to forego his haying long 
enough to attend the funeral of his brother, evidently 
impatient at the length of the service, which he had not 
hesitated to mention to the minister beforehand, speci- 
fying that it should be very brief. He hurried off 
when all was over, glad to he relieved, while others 
returned with Alice, and cared for matters at the 
cottage. 

As soon as he could find a spare moment Matthew 
went rather unwillingly to see Carter. He wished to 
examine the deeds given by his father and by George 
Haley. 

“The deeds, is it? I suppose Fm not obleeged to 
show’em, am I? I s’pose you don’t want to go to law 
about it.” 

Carter was evidently concerned on this point, and 
looked apprehensively at Matthew. 

“I might,” said Matthew. 

“’T wouldn’t do you no good,” sneered Carter. “I 
guess you ain’t got no powerful sight of money to hack 
up a lawsuit. But you can look at the deeds, I s’pose.” 

He went rather sulkily to the house and fished out 
the documents in question from an old iron box. 
Matthew looked them through critically. 


180 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


“I reckon you’ll see they’re all right, Mr. Rand. 
It’s four rods to the east of the hrook as it runs, you 
notice. I hain’t cared to run any fence because my 
cattle can’t get down the bank and across the hrook.” 

“It should he four rods west of the hrook as it 
runs,” said Matthew looking keenly at Carter. “That 
is the way George understands it, and that is the way 

my father understood it. There has been some ” 

“foul play” he would have said, hut checked himself, 
remembering that he would be wrong to accuse Carter 
without some better grounds than his own impression. 

“I don’t understand this,” he continued, scrutiniz- 
ing the deeds closely. “But if you have the deeds for 
it I am mistaken, and you had a right to sell. But 
there is something behind and I mean to find out 
what.” 

“You’ll have a good time finding out anything at 
all,” said Carter with an exultant little laugh. He felt 
how secure his fraud was, and rejoiced to observe that 
Matthew was nonplussed, and did not know what to 
do in the case. 

But Matthew, without much farther conversation 
with Carter, whom he disliked so much that he felt in 
constant danger of saying un-Christian things in his 


LEFT WITH GOD. 


181 


presence, went up the brook across lots, and over an 
upper bridge to George Haley’s farm. 

As he went on he was shaping in his mind the 
course he ought to pursue. Satisfied that he had been 
made the victim of a fraud, and smarting with the sense 
of having been robbed by Carter, nevertheless, in that 
short walk, his Christian principles serenely triumphed. 

“HE never had any rights of his own to defend, 
why should a poor disciple like myself he better than 
Jesus? If they wronged him he suffered it and for- 
gave. I wonder if he would dream of going to law with 
Wilson Carter if he were here in my place. The notion 
is absurd. It is only my regard for that water power 
that suggests it. And here am I, that promised to go 
wherever He might lead. Well, I will, if I see it 
clearly. Least of all will I demean myself by quarrel- 
ing in court with a man like Wilson Carter. That 
would be distinctly worse than to lose my farm alto- 
gether and everything earthly I have. I simply am not 
going to do anything of the kind. I have lived without 
any benefit from that water power for a good many 
years, and father did the same before me, and now I 
can continue. If he gained it by some tricky fraud, 
he will be the sufferer in the end. Yes ; he is the only 


182 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


one really injured. ‘What shall a man give in exchange 
for his soul?’ I wonder if I can’t learn that Jesus was 
right about these things?” 

Part of the time he spoke these thoughts aloud, as 
he walked on under the shade of the wooded pasture. 
The birds piped at him their innocent approval as he 
went by, and the squirrels even looked brightly out 
from the stumps and walls at him, and all the leaves 
whispered their rustlings of peaceful music in his ears. 
And with scarcely a struggle, during that calm walk 
Matthew submitted his soul to this keen insult and 
wicked fraud, and felt a happy delight in his triumph 
over his desire to resist it. 

But he found George Haley in a different frame of 
mind. He had heard of the sale of the water power 
only that afternoon and Matthew found him on the 
point of starting to the village to consult the only 
lawyer the town boasted. 

“You don’t mean to fight the matter, George, do 
you?” said Matthew quietly. 

“That’s the very thing I do mean. Matt. And 
I’ll teach that skunk a lesson too, or my name isn’t 
Haley.” 

“But I’ve seen the deeds, George. There is some 


TEE DAM. 


183 


error somewhere. The signatures are all right. It is 
father’s handwriting, and yours too.” 

“’Tisn’t any such thing, Matthew Rand! The deed 
I signed I read twice or three times. It said plain 
enough the west side of the brook. If he’s got one that 
says east side, then it’s a fraud and a forgery. I’ll make 
him suffer for it too.” 

“What good would that do?” 

George stared at Matthew and grew red in the face. 
There was something so calm, gentle and subdued in 
Matthew’s tone and manner that it acted as a rebuke 
to George. 

“You don’t say that you mean to let that man run 

all over you like a villain and not strike hack, do 

you?” 

“The Master had some reason to strike back. He 
didn’t do it, George. Neither will I.” 

“You mean that you’ll let him steal that water 
power of yours and not attempt to stop him, Matthew 
Rand?” 

“That means a quarrel, a scandal, a standing out 
for mere rights, a law suit and all the abuse of the 
lawyers and all the ugliness of it. If I weren’t a Chris- 
tian at all I think I should hesitate about righting 


184 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


myself that way. Besides I have no proof that Carter 
has committed a fraud.” 

George dropped his eyes and stood silent a long 
time. 

“I guess I ain’t Christian to that extent/’ he said 
at last. “I think a little fight and a little raking over 
would do that man more good than all your kindness.” 

“When a man loses faith in love and forbearance,” 
replied Matthew, “he loses faith in the foundations.” 

Then with a sudden rising of a sort of native elo- 
quence in his voice he suddenly broke out again: 

“See here, George Haley. Does God rule this 
world or doesn’t he? And if he does, what’s the use 
of believing that half-way? I believe he does, and I 
don’t mean to believe it half-way. Very well! If he 
does rule, he knows a great sight more about that water 
power than you or I. God rules, George. You and I 
needn’t go about in our coarse, ignorant, fashion trying 
to work out his judgments for him. There isn’t any 
principle at stake. It is merely a bare question of 
property between some human worms, not worth talk- 
ing about on your dying day. If Carter stole that 
water power God knows how to punish Carter. So 
now, I say to you, George, you and I had better let God 


LEFT WITH GOD. 


185 


alone and let him do that thing in his own way. 
Here’s a clear case for him to work on, George, and he 
knows all about it. I’m a young man, and so are you. 
We’ve got time to see whether God approves the thing 
that has been done.” 

“I s’pose it won’t do any good. Matt’, for me to go 
it alone. I don’t understand your way of looking at 
it very well, I guess, but if you think that way I’ll have 
to stand it. I don’t lose a great deal.” 

“Well, I put it to you whether it isn’t the Christian 
way, George. I’m not authorized to pose as one of the 
Lord’s prophets, but I tell you that brook will never 
benefit the man that has taken it wrongfully. The 
Lord will see to that.” 

He spoke as confidently as a man who had a revela- 
tion. George Haley was not as fine nor as religious as 
Matthew, but he could not but he impressed by the 
quiet earnestness of his neighbor. He wondered curi- 
ously how Matthew expected the Lord to work out this 
problem. 

“I never’ll be satisfied until that man gets his pay 
for this cheating,” he said doggedly. 

“Nor I. But that is the very thing I am predicting. 
He will get it to the last iota. He will, because the 


186 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


Lord rules, and the Lord is a great deal more reliable 
than the county court, George. That brook has a 
voice, and it can tell the Lord all about the case. The 
day will come, George Haley, when Wilson Carter 
will discover that the worst thing he could do was 
to steal it. It will find a way to judge him, de- 
pend upon it.” 

“I know the minister said something of that kind 
about natural things, — and how they turn against 
wrong doers. I hope it’ll turn out so.” 

“Give up your notion of going to law then, George, 
and wait. As true as the Lord rules he will make the 
brook its own justifier and God’s justifier. Wait and 
see, George.” 

George Haley looked around in the pleasant sun- 
shine, thinking of that proposition. He felt, dully, 
how hard it was to put away his rights in this fashion. 
He knew that he had meant to reserve his part of the 
brook, on which there was no water power but which 
would be enhanced in value by the damming of the 
stream for manufacturing. But the strong faith and 
confident tone and manner of Matthew turned the 
balance of his mind. He looked into Matthew’s face 
and then reached out his hand. 


LEFT WITH GOD. 


187 


“All right/’ he said with a smile. “I’m with you. 
We’ll leave the brook with God.” 

The two men clasped hands in the sunset, their 
faces lighted, as they stood, by its glory, and Matthew 
said: 

“It will be safe there, I reckon. God knows how 
to take care of it, and he will.” 

It was a strange theology of common life. Will 
God honor that kind of faith? 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE DAM. 

OTWITHSTANDING the agreement between 
them, Matthew and George Haley at the 
latter’s suggestion examined carefully the 
boundaries specified in the fraudulent deeds. Find- 
ing the hounding marks all in the specified places 
and the deeds, which George also examined, appar- 
ently all right, George confessing that the signature 
to the one he had given was genuine, the two 
young farmers dropped the matter and allowed the 
fraud to stand. 

A year passed away. Mr. Richly came upon the 
scene and made extensive arrangements for utilizing 
his purchase. George and Matthew, respecting the 
compact between them to leave the whole matter 
to God, did not inform anybody of their conviction 
about the ownership of the property. When George 
had thought it all over, and had a few more quiet 
talks with Matthew, he succeeded in putting away 



THE DAM. 


189 


his rancor and settled down to Matthew’s view of 
the case. 

Matthew’s mother of course had to be told. When 
she knew that Carter had sold the brook, she remem- 
bered that Mr. Rand, when living, had frequently re- 
peated to her the account of the sale to Carter, telling 
how he had saved out the brook with the hope some 
day of realizing a goodly sum for it. 

“But your way is best in the end, my son,” she said, 
without a murmur. “I have seen a good many mean 
things done, Matthew, and I never knew one of them to 
prosper in the end. The Lord knows best and he will 
bring this all right.” 

Matthew kissed her shining face and after that felt 
increased faith in the wisdom of his course. And if 
anybody asked about the matter, with the impression 
that Matthew must have sold the brook to Carter, he 
evaded direct answers, which evasions were attributed 
to his business reserve. He was known to be a carefully 
spoken young man, and no one was surprised by this 
reticence. 

The first step towards the improvement of a water 
power is, of course, the making of a dam. The fall of 
Sweetwater Brook was continuous for more than a 


190 


THE AVEHGING BROOK. 


half mile, and the volume of water in the spring was 
enough for several hundred horse power. By building 
the dam nearly up to the head of the rapids, besides 
taking advantage of the whole perpendicular descent, 
a long valley above could be filled, mostly lying in 
Wilson Carter’s upper farm, together with the land 
of which he had defrauded Haley, thus forming a large 
pond, that would furnish storage for summer use. In 
the building of this dam Mr. Richly thought it would 
be advantageous to utilize the help of some of the 
farmers who, when the less busy season on their lands 
was over, might be hired at very low wages to assist. 
As he had bought the brook of Carter at a figure which 
he thought entirely satisfactory to himself, and as noth- 
ing had been said to him about the fraud, he naturally 
consulted that individual a good deal in the preliminary 
surveys and arrangements. Carter, playing his man- 
ners with as much shrewdness and courtesy as he knew 
how to assume, saw, as he thought, a chance to make 
yet a little more money out of his scheme. He had 
built a dam once in his life, and knew a good 
deal about the process. He mentioned to Mr. 
Richly that he thought he could build this one 
much more cheaply than a regular contractor from 


TEE DAM. 


191 


the city, and just as good a dam for practical pur- 
poses. 

“It will have to be built strong up there/’ said 
Richly, one day, while they were talking it over. “It 
wouldn’t do to have a break-out. There’ll be enough 
water behind it to flood the whole meadow when it is 
done.” 

“Stone is heavier than water,” said Carter assur- 
ingly. “I can put them in so ten times the water can’t 
stir ’em.” 

But before giving out any contracts Richly had the 
surveys carefully made and the specifications drawn up 
to suit the conditions and very thoroughly cover the 
necessities of the location. Among other things they 
specified that the stone borders of the dam should be 
sunk four feet below the bed level of the brook, and 
laid dry in caissons, and that they should extend at 
this depth a certain distance, imbedded in the rocky 
soil of the banks. Against these abutments the dam 
was to be built of timbers whose main support was to be 
the side walls thus bedded in the banks. It was appar- 
ent from this plan that the strength of .the dam was 
dependent chiefly upon the secure and honest building 
of these abutting stays of stone. 


192 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


Carter read the specifications over carefully. He 
was minute in praising especially this careful provision 
for making the side walls secure. 

“And four feet ain’t a hit too deep to lay them,” 
he said heartily. “I reckon I can build the thing so 
it’ll stand as long as the world does, Mr. Richly.” 

Richly left him the specifications to figure upon. 

“What are they?” asked Mrs. Carter, meekly, when 
in the evening she saw him bending over the papers 
at his red table where he always did his writing. 

“Don’t concern a woman, I guess,” he said, more 
good-naturedly than usual, however. “It’s about the 
dam. I’m going to take the contract to build it. If 
I do, there’ll be hands to board, so it might concern you 
after all. He wants it dug clear through the earth for 
the foundations. But I know how to slight a piece of 
work without injuring it, I guess.” 

“There’s going to he houses down below, ain’t 
there?” 

“That’s the idee. But I’ll make it safe enough if 
I get the job, and not go to all that cost, either.” 

Mrs. Carter said no more then. But she had that 
moment a curious prejudice against the dam project 
that once or twice caused her to warn Carter against 


THE DAM. 


193 


anything that might leave it insecure. She could not her- 
self then have told why. The day came when this premo- 
nition was brought to her mind in a moment, when its 
force seemed like a voice of warning from heaven. 

Carter knew that Mr. Richly was a shrewd man of 
affairs who would canvass all the possibilities in letting 
his contracts. But he thought he, being on the ground, 
would be able to underbid any one from abroad in 
making the dam. He figured out several calculations 
that Mr. Richly had not contemplated. He was shrewd 
enough himself and knew enough about the probable 
cost of that kind of work to enable him to guess pretty 
near the minimum that would be reached by any one 
who might go strictly by the specifications. But Carter 
had heard Richly remark that it would be impossible 
for him to oversee all the details of the construction 
himself, and that he wanted to get the work into honest 
hands. 

On the basis of these side calculations, that he did 
not mention even to his wife, Carter after several 
days of figuring and surveying made his hid for the 
contract. He was careful not to run his figures so low 
as to excite suspicion, hut he felt confident that they 
were low enough to take the award. 


194 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


Now here was a man cunningly planning his own 
ruin in order to make a few hundred dollars by cheat- 
ing Mr. Richly. He did not intend to build the dam 
according to specifications. He had worked out a 
whole scheme of details in his mind whereby he could 
save nearly half the necessary expense of honestly doing 
the work as agreed. He had already been enriched by 
stealing the brook, and the success of this fraud only 
incited him to commit the next one. Whom the gods 
would destroy they first make blind. 

Mr. Richly knew as much about Carter as his neigh- 
bors knew. He regarded him as a hard, shrewd man, 
but had no reason for thinking him a scoundrel. 
When he saw that Carter’s figures were a little better 
than the next lowest bid, and had looked into some 
work of the sort built by Carter which seemed to be all 
right, he came up to Penesee and gave him the contract, 
under certain well-defined bonds which Carter was 
readily able to furnish. 

Carter was surprised when he began to believe that 
neither Matthew nor George Haley intended to make 
any contest against his conveyance of the brook. He 
did not understand that kind of forbearance. Had he 
been the sufferer, he would have contested, even hope- 


THE DAM. 


195 


lessly, merely in order to make expense to the other 
party. The best he conld make of the course of these 
young men was to attribute their self-restraint to a 
fear of being defeated. He was certain he would heat 
them in any court, and thought they were wise enough 
not to go to law for nothing. The idea that they were 
leaving their cause in the hands of the Lord with every 
confidence of seeing justice done in the end, could not 
enter the thought of such a man as Carter. 

But he was set thinking a trifle in another way 
when, on going over to offer Matthew employment on 
the dam, the young farmer refused point blank to work 
for him a day. 

“You may build dams, Mr. Carter, but the Lord will 
take care of my interests. I very well know that you 
have no right to the brook. Don’t ask me to help you 
out in your transaction.” 

Carter went off astonished, wondering what Mat- 
thew could suppose the Lord had to do with building 
dams — to say nothing of stealing a water power. But 
when George Haley said very much the same thing to 
him, it went into his consciousness a little deeper. He 
had never been a believer in religion or in God. But 
he was intelligent enough to know that conscience has 


196 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


a place somewhere in every man’s breast. He believed 
in God without admitting it, too; that is, he believed 
snperstitiously, and had a kind of moral cowardice in 
relation to things he could not plainly understand. 
Like many another atheist he never liked to stand 
under a tree in a thunder storm, and if he saw the moon 
over his left shoulder, or was crossed in his walk by the 
flight of a black crow, he experienced an uneasy feeling 
of apprehension. So now, when he went home from 
his interviews with Matthew and afterward with 
George, he was not able all day to shake off the 
haunting memory of their words. He said to himself 
that it would be just like those fellows to give him some 
sort of had luck, with their talk about the water power. 
He even wondered if they were not praying against him, 
and if praying had any effect anywhere. 

This was the first beginning of the work of coward 
conscience in Wilson Carter. 

But he succeeded readily in securing help enough 
without Matthew and George, and then began his 
fraudulent work on the dam. He got everything ready 
so as to time the visits of Mr. Richly and make the work 
correspond outwardly with the contract. He first got 
all of his stone in readiness and hauled to the brook, 


TEE DAM. 


197 


and then began digging on the day of Mr. Richly’s 
expected visit. The manufacturer could come down 
not oftener than once in a week, usually on Saturday 
afternoon, returning Monday. As soon as he was out 
of town on Monday, early in October, Carter set his 
men at work. The wall that was to go down four feet 
for safety below the bed of the brook in caissons, went 
down that distance only at such points as might he 
liable to be inspected. It was imbedded in the bank 
so as to he beyond view, and not to be detected as 
violating the contract without a good deal of trouble. 
The work was all finished on one side before Mr. 
Richly came again. He was deceived, moreover, by 
noticing that on the other side the caisson that Carter 
had cunningly begun answered, so far as it went, to 
the specifications. Carter added to Mr. Richly’s con- 
fidence a slyly-repeated account of the great labor it 
had been to put the wall down so far, and complained 
that, after all, he was likely to lose money on the job. 

Mr. Richly went away satisfied; and the next week 
the other side was carried far enough along to he be- 
yond suspicion when he came again. As a matter of 
record, the dam was imbedded in the hank far enough 
to hold the ordinary spring floods for some years. But 


198 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


it was certain that the water, by its continuous pressure 
and slow motion, would some day work around the ends 
and under the foundations of the stone work. Then 
there was nothing but the weight of the stones left to 
keep back the weight of the pond that would be leashed 
behind it, waiting to break through. 

But there was no one to betray him. None of the 
workmen knew what the specifications were. None of 
them could have said exactly how deep the foundations 
went nor how far they were imbedded in the bank. 
They had worked as they were directed, and would not 
have been able to enlighten Mr. Richly had he thought 
it worth while to examine them on the point. 

The dam was built and finished. The timbers 
rested against the abutments, and the heavy planks 
were driven closely down to the bed and rested against 
their stone bases. And in a few days where the upper 
course of the brook had been, flanked by its sloping 
banks on either side, there now lay a black expanse of 
water that, rising higher and higher, at last over-ran the 
flush plank and formed a beautiful fall, sparkling in 
the sun and foaming into yeasty eddies before it swept 
on in the lower course. 

A flume was made, as provided for in the construe- 


TEE DAM. 


199 


tion of the dam, and Mr. Richly’s carpenters began 
their plans for building his factory farther down the 
brook. 

In the spring this was to be built, and with it 
various cottages for his workmen, a hoarding house and 
store — in fact, a small manufacturing settlement that 
would transform the quiet valley into a scene of hust- 
ling activity and make money for its owner. 

And Wilson Carter, gradually forgetting the rebuff 
given him by Mattheft and George, calculated how 
much he might yet make out of the fortunate coming 
of the industry to this locality. He had already made a 
fortune by it. Ten thousand dollars, in the primitive 
and simple conditions of country Hew England life, 
was wealth, and Carter had his money safely laid away, 
congratulating himself that he had made it by a stroke 
of shrewdness that he never expected to regret. And 
he knew nothing at all about the compact of the two 
men whom he had wronged to leave their case with 
God. He settled down to the assurance that he had 
succeeded, and cared very little about what God might 
do. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE FIRST BLOW. 

N the midst of his work of carrying out his 
fraudulent projects, there was, however, all 
the time a load of intense anxiety upon the 
mind of Wilson Carter. It did not have any immediate 
relation to his wrong-doing, but" it made him nervous, 
and often-times sleepless when, after his hard day’s 
work, he sought his pillow for the night. 

The cause of this anxiety was Paul, his blind boy. 
By the advice of the local physician, about the time the 
dam building began, Carter sent his unfortunate son 
to the city where he was to undergo a treatment for his 
sight that promised to be successful in removing the 
affliction. As George Haley had remarked, all of 
Carter’s affectional interest centered in Paul. The boy 
was now fifteen years of age, and from his earliest child- 
hood he had been the care and pride of his father. 
Though blind, he was possessed of unusual intelligence, 
and by his sweet disposition and sunny ways had 
endeared himself to all those who knew him. 



THE FIRST BLOW. 


201 


Upon him Wilson Carter seemed to concentrate all 
the tenderness he had in his disposition, and while he 
was hard, grasping and unloving to everybody else, he 
had never been known to speak a harsh word to his 
boy. This doubtless showed that somewhere under his 
hard disposition there was the latency, at least, of a 
different grade of impulse. If it was not enough to 
regenerate him, it might he at least enough to make 
him susceptible to the pangs of regret and remorse. 

At length Paul came hack in charge of one of the 
hospital assistants. 

“Tell me now — will he see?” hurst out Carter, 
almost before he could shake hands with Paul, who 
stood quietly by the fire smiling at his father. His 
eyes were bandaged, hut he bore little trace of the 
ordeal to which the operation in the hospital had sub- 
jected him. 

‘‘Yes, father. The doctor says in a month or two 
I will see as well as anybody. Isn’t that good news 
now, father?” 

“Thank the Lord!” said Carter, using, however, 
only the first expression of gratitude familiar to him. 
He patted Paul on the shoulder and inquired into all 
the particulars of the operation at the hospital. 


202 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


“I feel as well as ever, father, now,” said Paul, sit- 
ting down to his supper. “I was nervous at first, but 
when the time came for it, somehow I wasn’t much 
afraid after all.” 

Carter paid the charges in the bill that the assistant 
had brought without even attempting, as he % almost 
invariably did, to beat down the price, even though it 
was a heavy bill, to his thinking, for the service per- 
formed. 

Paul seemed to renew his* spirits at once when he 
got back to the sound of familiar voices and to the 
contact of familiar objects. He had a black and white 
Gordon setter that was overjoyed to greet him home 
again, and leaped and barked in his delight for an 
unusually long time before he could be induced to 
desist. This dog was Paul’s constant companion, and 
together they went all over the farm and neighboring 
country, with which Paul was far more familiar than 
many would have been who can see. He knew every 
path that led through the various wood tracts, and 
every spring in the meadow, and every solitary tree or 
great rock or grassy hollow in all the near region. He 
was an active boy, rather delicate of build, but full of 
vital force. By the sense of touch alone he could tell 


THE FIRST BLOW. 


203 


his surroundings and find his direction wherever he 
wished to go. 

When his father knew that his idolized son would 
regain sight, his step grew light, and he thought 
more about this circumstance than about his 
money-making, even. He did not tire of hearing over 
and over the account of Paul’s experience in the hospi- 
tal, and the assurance of the doctors that he would be 
cured. And with a reserve that was curious, hut which 
he had somehow always felt obliged to maintain, he 
could not bring himself even to mention the transac- 
tions of the past few months. He might cheat Mat- 
thew and George and Mr. Richly, but he would not 
have ventured to reveal his wrong-doing to Paul. He 
kept all these things as far from the boy as he could, 
feeling what a gulf there was between his love for Paul 
and his sins against those with whom he had dealt in 
business relations. 

It happened that for some days Paul did not go near 
the brook. He was busy about many things, feeding 
his rabbits and hunting beechnuts in the wood on the 
hillside, and as he had not heard the matter mentioned, 
he knew nothing of the changes that had been made 
with the musical old friend which had sung to him so 


204 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


many strange and' beautiful songs in the past years. 
The brook was one of his great delights. Often he had 
sat on its bank and fished for the trout that he could 
catch where no one else could seem to induce them to 
bite. He knew all the trees where the woodpecker had 
his haunt, and every rock that sheltered a squirrel play- 
ing along its banks. And almost daily in the summer 
time he had crossed its course on a series of flat stones 
that had been placed in its bed to form a crossing where 
it was intersected by the path leading from the farm 
by a short cut to the village of Penesee. 

But it was now November and the brook was not 
so inviting, and it happened therefore that Paul did not 
soon learn about the dam and the water power scheme. 

But one day after he had been home for about a 
week, in the short afternoon when the sun was shining 
warmly with the haze of Indian summer lying on the 
land, Paul bethought him that he had not been to the 
village since he returned. It was time for the coming 
of the mail, and he had often made the journey with 
his dog for the purpose of bringing home the occasional 
letter or weekly newspaper to the family. 

He would be gone from the house scarcely more 
than an hour, and so he did no more than tell his 


THE FIRST BLOW. 


205 


mother hastily that he thought of going to the post- 
office. 

Did God blind her eyes, too? Could she not have 
remembered that since last he went to the village a 
great, wide, deep lake, black with its tree shadows, had 
risen over the little path of flat stones, risen to cover 
them ten feet deep under its cold, pulseless bosom? 

But Paul went along, light-hearted with the won- 
derment and delight of boyhood. How would it seem 
to see these things that hitherto he had only touched? 
And what was it to see? That wonderful world of 
color and light and shape and form — how absolutely 
it must remain unimagined even in his soul, until some 
day the miracle of his healing should be accomplished, 
and one by one these thick swathings he taken off. He 
knew that it was something strange and wonderful that 
was to happen then, hut what it would be, how it would 
seem, he could not have the faintest realization. But 
he knew that it was to he so wonderful that two or three 
men of science were to come all the way from the city 
to observe him and take notes of what he did and of 
the way he acted. 

But he was not thinking altogether of this as he 
went along. He had another matter on his mind. It 


206 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


was the memory of his father’s voice. For once, and 
for the first time that day, he had heard a different 
voice when his father spoke. He wondered what had 
gotten into his father’s mouth to make him speak as 
he did. Paul had trembled at hearing him, and wished 
he might then know how his face felt — whether it was 
more wrinkled than usual at the moment. Paul, with 
a curious blind man’s fancy, had come to associate harsh 
tones with wrinkles. 

Paul had been talking about a man who had stolen 
some money at the hospital and who, after awhile, had 
been strangely betrayed by his own handwriting. 

'““The doctor told me the same thing that Miss 
Moffatt, my teacher, said at the Sunday-school, father. 
She said that ‘everybody’s sin is pretty sure to come out 
sometime.’ ” 

His father did not answer and Paul wondered why. 

“Do you think when anybody cheats and does wrong 
God will bring it to light, father?” persisted Paul. 

“Don’t talk, Paul!” said his father; and Paul, hear- 
ing this harsh tone that his father had never used be- 
fore to him, trembled and thought of the wrinkles. 

But the warm sun and the chattering squirrels and 
the whispering leaves, dry and sere on the beech trees. 


THE FIRST BLOW. 


207 


soothed his spirit as he went along. The dog barked 
and whisked about in glee and scampered along the 
path, running hack every half-minute to leap upon Paul, 
and lick his hand or rub his glossy side against his mas- 
ter’s legs to show his affection. 

Paul was acquainted with all the smells of the for- 
est. He could tell whether he was under a beech tree, 
or a maple tree, or a pine tree, by a thousand signs that 
the ordinary hoy could not have understood. Now and 
then he would stoop and fumble about until he found 
some savory nut that he knew he was likely to come 
upon at certain places. And in this way he went on up 
the wooded pasture, towards the crossing, where he ex- 
pected to go over the brook as usual on the flat stones. 

By and by he came in sound of a new noise that he 
had not heard before. It was the water falling over the 
new dam. He wondered what it could he. He had 
never heard a like sound, so far as he remembered. It 
was like the brook, hut not like any voice of the brook 
that had ever greeted him before. 

“Here, Jack! What’s that? Seek ’em, Jack.” 

He thought somehow perhaps the dog could en- 
lighten him about the noise. But Jack could not 
understand what was wanted, and after rushing about 


208 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


a little, with sundry short harks, came back and stood 
quietly wagging his tail beside his young master. 

Paul thought perhaps some one had been placing 
obstructions in the brook, and that this was merely the 
water rushing against them. But thinking he would 
ask his father about it when he reached home, he let 
the matter go out of mind and went slowly along his 
way. 

As he became aware by familiar signs that he was 
drawing near the crossing of the brook, he listened for 
its ripple and sob among the stones and grasses where 
it flowed. He was surprised to miss these long familiar 
sounds. He stopped and felt all about for the familiar 
objects by which he guided himself. They were all 
there, the crooked tree at the end of the old stone fence, 
the low hollow through which the path ran, always 
damp and mouldy in autumn, with the odor of decay- 
ing vegetation, and, most tangible of all, the old log 
that lay directly across the path where it issued from 
the hollow, and which he had clambered over a thou- 
sand times. 

“Brook must have gone dry,” he said to himself. 
“It is very still to-day. I wonder what has stopped its 
singing. It always used to say as plainly as a voice to 


TEE FIRST BLOW. 


209 


me: f Come down and cross me! Come down and 

cross me!’ ” 

But to-day the brook seemed to say nothing at all. 
If he could have heard with a finer ear, perchance he 
would have caught the sound of the dark water that had 
taken the place of the babbling brook, inviting him to 
its chilly embrace. But how could he guess that there 
in his path lay no longer the brook but that black, still 
pool, reflecting the shadows of the November day and 
speaking no warning to his ears? 

In his path there was a rise in the land, and at the 
top of this a ledge. Many a time he had climbed this 
ledge merely for the sport of running down its steep 
slope towards the brook. It was here that Jack always 
began to hark and leap, ready for the race down to the 
grassy bank. 

But now, when he had climbed to the summit of the 
ledge, unable still to hear the brook in its course, he 
paused with a slight sense of uneasiness, wondering what 
change could have taken place in the water. There was 
a slight sob of water that seemed very near, but think- 
ing that he knew there was none near him he could not 
interpret the sound. 

But Jack did not bark this time. He came up 


210 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


quietly to his masters side as if to ask what was to be 
done, wagging his tail, and ready, if he was sent, to 
plunge into the black water that lay directly below their 
feet. 

“HI run down the rock and find out what has hap- 
pened to my brook anyhow,” said Paul, speaking to 
Jack. “Come on, hoy.” 

He ran down the slope, and the next instant was 
struggling in the cold water of the mill pond. Jack 
leaped in after him. 

At half past four Wilson Carter came home from 
some farming work that he had been doing above the 
house. 

“Where is Paul?” he asked, coming into the sitting- 
room where Mrs. Carter was mending by the window, 
taking advantage of the already waning sunlight that 
streamed in at the panes. 

This was Carter’s almost invariable question when he 
came from his work, unless Paul was in sight. 

“He went to the post-office. It is past time for 
him to be back,” answered Mrs. Carter, a little anxious 
herself at Paul’s prolonged stay. It was now more than 
three hours since he started off. 

Carter washed his hands at the sink and waited a 


TEE FIRST BLOW. 


211 


little for Paul to come. Then he went out and looked 
down the road leading to the bridge. It was farther to 
the village by the road, and he reasoned that it would 
take Paul longer than it used to, to go and return. 

He went into the house, and as he crossed the thres- 
hold a thought struck him that made him hasten into 
the sitting-room, with a sudden fierce apprehension 
leaping into his mind. 

“Which way did Paul go?” he asked huskily of his 
wife. 

She looked up in astonishment at hearing him speak 
in this tone. His look was as alarming as his tone. 

She got up, trembling and stared at her husband. 

“Why he couldn’t go hut one way — that’s by the 
bridge — could he?” 

“My God!” cried Carter turning on his heel. He* 
said nothing more hut rushed out into the air. Again 
he looked down the white road towards the bridge. A 
wagon was coming down on the other side of the brook, 
and he hoped that some one had picked Paul up, as 
sometimes had been the case, to give him h lift on the 
way home. But he was soon able to see, by straining his 
eyes and with a horrible sinking in his heart, that there 
was but one person in the vehicle. It was a neighbor 


212 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


who lived farther on over the hill, going home from the 
village. 

As Carter watched, standing in the still October air, 
he heard a faint, far-off sound up the pasture, coming 
from the direction of the pond. It was barely audible 
at the distance, and sounded like a long wail of distress. 
He instantly thought of Jack. 

“It’s the dog. What does that mean, I wonder?” 
His knees felt weak under him and the sweat began to 
start on his forehead. 

He ran to the stable, where he knew one of his hired 
men was working with some tools. 

“Take a rope and come along,” he cried, suddenly 
breaking in upon the man with a face so white and 
agonized that the workman needed nothing more by 
way of urgency; but getting hold of the first rope he 
could reach, started off after Carter. A rope was merely 
the first thing Carter thought of as likely to be service- 
able in any case of danger at the pond. For he had re- 
membered the pond! 

He had made the pond — made it by a double fraud. 
The running brook that he had stolen now was sending 
into his soul shocks of fear and horror that he never had 
felt before. 


THE FIRST BLOW. 


213 


The pond! He knew the familiar path where Paul 
had so many times crossed the little brook. He had not 
told him — nobody had told him. There was no reason 
why he should not have gone this way to-day. 

And with this fear growing momentarily to a hor- 
rible conviction in his mind, Wilson Carter, like a man 
in a horrid delirium, rushed along the forest path to- 
wards the pond. 

As he ran along, followed by the hired man, he heard 
from time to time, and increasingly plainer, the dismal 
howl of the dog. 

At last he came in sight of the ledge where the path 
met the fatal brink over which Paul had gone to his 
death. On the rock was the dog, moving uneasily about 
and looking out over the water, across whose black 
spaces he was sending out from time to time his doleful 
note of grief, with head raised in the air and tail curled 
between his legs. 

“Jack, Jack! Almighty God! Jack, where is he? 
Paul, Paul!” 

And crying thus, Carter rushed up the rock and 
looked out over the pond. Then, groaning, he sank 
down on the rock and broke out into cursing like a mad 


man. 


214 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


That night they dragged the pond and brought out 
its dead and ghastly prey. His pale and discolored face 
lay that midnight in the parlor of the farm house, 
touched, as it reposed upturned, by the streaming light 
of the moon, while a groaning figure walked up and 
down the house, bearing in his wretched soul the first 
stroke of judgment inflicted by the stolen brook. 


CHAPTEK IV. 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 

'HEY rode slowly back, while the laborers 
heaped up a fresh mound of mother earth 
above the fair body of Paul. Alice and the 
friends who did neighborly services with gentle kind- 
ness prepared an evening meal. Wilson Carter and 
Paul’s stricken mother sat alone in the dim parlors 
of the farm-house, and refused to eat. The men, 
grouping outside, talked over the calamity in sub- 
dued tones, while the women within sat silent, or 
whispered to one another in subdued and sympathetic 
conversation. After the meal Matthew, feeling that he 
might perhaps take this occasion to show Carter that he 
held no rancor against him in this hour of disaster, went 
into the parlor. 

“If there is nothing more I can do I will go now. 
It is growing dark, and mother must get home and so 
must I.” 

Carter looked at him doggedly, and his brows con- 



216 


TBE AVENGING BROOK. 


tracted in a frown. But he answered not a word. 
Smitten, struck down by a blow that almost benumbed 
his power to feel, the one great burden of his thought 
was the brook. And the sight of the man whom chiefly 
he had wronged made him inwardly groan, and a feeling 
of horrible hatred against Matthew swept over him. 
Very likely it is this man’s prayer that has brought this 
thing to pass. 

Matthew, finding he could elicit nothing from 
Carter, went away carrying his mother and Alice, 
who now lived in the village, with him. They 
had busied themselves, preparing and clearing away the 
supper at Carter’s, but had taken none of it themselves. 
Matthew could help his neighbor and return all good 
for the evil he had suffered, but he would not take bread 
in Carter’s house. Alice noticed this and felt much the 
same way about it. So they went home without eating. 

“But you must have supper with us, dear,” said Mrs. 
Rand to Alice. “It has been a hard day with you, and 
Matthew says you haven’t eaten a mouthful since morn- 
ing. Come right in and get a good cup of tea now.” 

Alice was very tired and did not stand on ceremony 
in accepting this welcome invitation. Matthew stabled 
his horse and did the evening chores, while Alice and 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 


217 


Mrs. Rand went about together, setting the table and 
toasting bread, and making tea for supper. 

When Matthew came in he saw Alice laying the 
cloth, and she looked so bright in the open firelight that 
was streaming from the fire place, and the whole picture 
of the house with her in it was so beautiful to him, that 
he had a little thrill of satisfaction that he could not 
explain entirely to himself. 

Then at the table she sat down in his mother’s ac- 
customed place (perhaps that dear soul had so planned 
the effect) and poured the tea, and presided like a house- 
hold matron at the table. 

Matthew got flushed looking at her, and his thoughts 
grew confused. He found himself wondering if some 
things would not be better than some other things. 
Here he was, past thirty, and living as the good Book 
says it is not good for a man to live, and Alice was even 
more alone than he. 

How bright her face was in the firelight! and how 
softly her eyes shone out upon him! She was a little 
shy in this strange place, but she evidently was pleased 
too; and the look of weariness was all out of her face now 
in this home-like, cheerful place. 

Matthew grew silent as he thought, and his mother. 


218 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


noticing his abstraction, attributed it to his being tired. 

“A funeral is hard on the nerves, that’s so,” she said 
sympathetically. “Poor Carter! Poor Mrs. Carter!” 

“Mother, does Alice know?” 

“Not unless you have told her.” 

“It is about the brook,” said Matthew, glad to turn 
the conversation where he would be relieved from his 
embarrassing speculations about the state of Alice’s 
mind regarding himself. “The brook properly belongs 
to me. Your Uncle Wilson made that dam and the 
pond, after selling my property wrongfully and meanly. 
I don’t mind telling it to you, but I wish it to go no 
farther. George Haley and I agreed to leave the matter 
with God. To-day we followed the body of poor little 
Paul to the grave yard. God knows whether that 
calamity is not his own way of judging Wilson Carter. 
The brook that he dammed has cursed him like a 
Nemesis.” 

Alice looked at him with appreciative sympathy. 

“I believe it has,” she said slowly. “Thank you for 
telling me. I remembered how he treated father when 
he was dying, and I didn’t want to go there. But I 
remembered that we must not go by the eye-for-eye and 
tooth-for-tooth rule, and so I got my courage up and 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 


219 


went. I am glad I did — though he seems not to have 
appreciated it.” 

“ETo. But we have done what it seemed to be our 
duty to do,” answered Matthew. “Sometime I will tell 
you the whole story about the brook.” 

“Perhaps you can to-night, my son,” said Mrs. Rand 
softly. “It is raining and sleeting hard outside, 
and I can’t think of letting you go home in it, 
Alice. After breakfast Matthew will drive you down 
to the village.” 

Alice made a little feeble demurrer, but yielded the 
point when Matthew seconded his mother’s words by 
remarking that it would actually be dangerous to her 
health to go out in such a storm. She was very glad to 
be saved that necessity. 

And so, after the table was cleared and the ever- 
recurring task of dish washing disposed of, they gath- 
ered around the brightly blazing fire and talked. That 
is to say, the ladies talked, while Matthew alternately 
watched Alice, studying the fair profile outlined in the 
firelight, or sat thinking how he had never happened to 
have noticed what a fine girl she was before, and if he 
wouldn’t better change his shoes and “slick up” a little 


more. 


220 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


He grew uncomfortable at last, thinking how his 
shoes looked, and went out and changed them. Before 
he was through this he thought some other changes 
might be desirable, and he at length came back in his 
best Sunday black, looking enough better, as Alice said 
to herself, to pay for the trouble. 

Somehow, when Mrs. Band slipped out of the room 
on some errand and did not come back, the young people 
did not stop talking, and it was eleven o’clock before 
they thought of her being away. 

Well, in that evening Matthew began to love Alice. 
Her bright presence in his house and her lonely life as 
well, appealed to his imagination. But Matthew was 
one who acted slowly. Besides, he was a farmer, and 
unaccustomed to much female society. 

So it went on, this slow love-making, for some weeks 
before he could summon the courage to speak. He 
could not tell what her mind might be. Perhaps she 
would say “No” after all. This possibility worried him 
greatly. But thinking divine guidance as important in 
choosing a wife as in any transaction of life, certainly, 
he made his courtship a subject of daily prayer. His 
mother saw how matters were shaping and wished he 
would confide in her. At length, one day, when she 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 


221 


found him standing abstractedly in the kitchen, she 
said with a gentle smile. 

“Jt isn’t good for a man to be alone, Matthew. 
When are you going to ask her?” 

Matthew colored to the roots of his hair, and looked 
at his mother with shifting eyes, as if he had been 
detected in a crime. 

“Do — do you think — ?” 

“Now don’t ask me, you backward boy. Go and ask 
her.” 

“I will, then,” blurted out Matthew, his face break- 
ing into a smile. “After all, it isn’t anything to be 
ashamed of, I suppose.” 

So the very next day he went down with his cutter, 
the sleighing being now very good, and invited Alice to 
ride with him. Alice thanked him with bright eyes, 
and was ready in a moment. It was the hardest task of 
his life. He never knew just how he accomplished it 
when it was done. But when he went home that even- 
ing he did not meet his mother’s eyes very steadily. 

“Well?” she asked, standing before him and putting 
her hand on his broad shoulders. 

“She’ll make you a good daughter, mother,” said 
Matthew coloring again, and fidgeting. 


222 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


“I wonder when?” said Mrs. Rand, curious and glad 
as a child. 

“June. I suppose I’ll have to have a new suit made, 
and slick up this old house, too. Til make it shine — or 
I don’t know myself — for her.” 

“And I’ll help you, my dear boy. I love her already, 
Matthew.” 

She kissed him and released him, while he went off 
whistling a hymn tune to himself. 

And in their new happiness it did not occur 
to either of these young people that Alice had be- 
come, by the death of blind little Paul, the nearest 
of kin and legal heiress of the wealth of Wilson 
Carter and his wife. 

Matthew’s farming began to prosper the following 
year. He was opening up some of the results of several 
years’ patient trial of the best and newest methods, and 
from this time on he began to accumulate a competence. 
When Alice became his wife she brought with her for 
her dowry only her own sweet and faithful self, but her 
good sense and careful habits of house-wifery became a 
very substantial help to Matthew, and as the years glided 
by they found the bank account and the flocks and herds 
increasing, and people took to saying that Matthew was 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 


223 


the coming man of the town in the matter of thrift and 
prosperity. 

Meanwhile Wilson Carter, slowly emerging from the 
shadows of the great calamity that had fallen upon him, 
seemed to grow harder and more grasping than ever. 
He had nobody to whom he could pour out his grief, 
and only wore it out by pursuing busily his schemes to 
increase his wealth. After Paul was gone, the lot of his 
sad-faced wife became increasingly harder. Her heart 
was really buried with her hoy in the little graveyard, 
beyond which she had not cherished any hopes that 
make bright the sorrows of a Christian. All her life 
she had lived in the shadow of Wilson Carter’s atheism, 
and when the hour came that there was need of com- 
fort for her grief, she had lost the power to appreciate 
it. She was on too low a level to leap the gulf of dis- 
tress, as they do who live higher up in the sunlight of 
faith. So she only shared the dull loneliness of her 
husband, between whom and herself there was no bond 
of sympathy to give cheer to either. 

But Wilson Carter thrived on the wrong he had com- 
mitted, as men count prosperity. He built small houses 
down the valley of the brook for Mr. Richly’s workmen, 
and rented them at a high rate. He sold his wood from 


224 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


several extensive wood lots to the factory for the boilers, 
and to the cottages for the fires of the workmen and 
their families. In various other ways he managed to 
gain and gain, until his neighbors knew that Carter was 
fast becoming a very rich man. And the richer he grew 
the poorer he lived. With the growing instincts of the 
miser or, perhaps, with the love of the fancied respect 
that men pay to wealth, he saved his money as carefully 
as he could, and ground his help and his tenants without 
mercy. When the factory had been built he saw an 
opportunity to sell his house, which the superintendent 
thought he could make over to suit his uses cheaper 
than he could build new, and so Carter sold and removed 
himself to one of the cottages in the meadow, which was 
quite large enough for his uses except in the busy season, 
when he could manage by getting some of his help 
hoarded at the factory hoarding house. 

Here he lived three years, driving his hard bargains 
and reaping his abundant harvests, and no one could say 
whether God had not purged, punished, and forgotten 
his wrong-doing. Carter heard that Alice was to marry 
Matthew, and he scowled at this, and remarked to his 
wife that he didn’t “cal’late” Matthew was so very 
simple and uncalculating as he professed, seeing he 


MATTHEW AND ALICE. 


225 


doubtless had a far look to coining into Wilson Carter’s 
property by the marriage some day. 

“But I reckon I know a way to spoil that trick,” he 
added with a grim look. So he had a will made be- 
queathing ten dollars to Alice, and the remainder, after 
the death of his wife, to a far distant cousin whom he 
had not seen for twenty years. He put the will away 
after it was drawn, intending to have it witnessed and 
signed whenever he thought best. He had a sort of 
infernal satisfaction in keeping the matter before his 
mind, as it kept up his hatred for Matthew. He knew 
that Matthew, who never spoke to him except when 
necessary, held in his heart the conviction of the wrong 
Carter had done him, and he chafed under this certainty 
that one man in the world despised and pitied him. 

But the will still lay in his strong box five years 
after the dam was built. The brook had for him still 
another message from God. For his punishment had 
not yet brought him to repentance. 


] 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 

HE great February thaw of 18 — is still remem- 
bered and retold in the village of Penesee. 
Farmers reckoning back to it, still remark 
that such and such an event was the year of the 
February thaw. This thaw was deservedly memorable 
from being marked by the great catastrophe, relatively 
as important to the simple dwellers in the hamlet as the 
ancient Biblical flood to the Israelites. 

All winter long the white snow had heaped itself 
one storm upon another, until by Candelmas day it lay 
four feet deep on a level in the forests, and was piled in 
mammoth drifts where the wind whirled it, along every 
fence and shed and rock, burying the landscape in an 
almost unbroken shroud of whiteness. The fence lines 
were practically obliterated, and when the crusts formed 
on the surface the village boys coasted with their sleds 
over the tops of the stone walls and fence rails as if 
they had never been laid. The roads were reduced to 



THE AVENGING BROOK. 


227 


narrow tracks of sleighruts that ran here and there 
through the deep cuts in the drifts that flanked either 
side in hanks higher than the passing teams of the 
farmers. 

In the latter part of February there came several 
fine, warm days. Then, one night before sunset, the 
clouds hanked dull in the south and the wind changed 
and began to rise in the same quarter. Just at dusk, as 
Matthew was driving home from the village he saw a 
flock of crows, the first seen since the severe weather 
began, fly over and settle down in the trees below the 
house. And about the same time a raindrop struck his 
hand, while the wind gusts swept up through the valley 
with a warmth in them that seemed almost spring-like. 

“We’ll have rain, sure enough,” he said to Alice 
when he came in for supper. “It will make great havoc 
with this deep snow. Already these warm days have 
softened it so that I could hardly drive the horse 
through some of the drifts.” 

Matthew’s stock was securely and warmly housed, 
and a storm could not prove much trouble at the farm. 
So when the rain was heard beating heavily against the 
panes, it only made the blazing firelight more cheerful 
by contrast, where Alice and Mrs. Rand sat at their 


228 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


knitting and crocheting, while Matthew read to them 
from the fascinating pages of some good book, as his 
frequent custom was of winter evenings. 

In the night Matthew remembered waking to hear 
the increased roar of the waterfall that was not far above 
the farm house. The sound was swelled by the rush of 
the waters of the brook in the gorge below, and mingled 
dully with the sound of the rain on roof and window. 
Matthew thought also of the dam and the pond, and of 
the cottages in the valley below. He had thought of 
these things before, but the dam had stood now for 
five years, and he thought it was doubtless safe to stand 
forever. 

In the morning the rain still continued, and he was 
obliged to wade in watery slush half-way to his knees 
in places, to reach the great bam where his cattle were 
stalled. 

“You’ll have to stay inside to-day, mooley cows,” he 
said as he dealt out to them their hay and com stalks, 
and attended to his milking and other chores. “It is 
going to rain all day, old Dobbin. Eat your oats now 
and be content to have such a tight stall.” 

Dobbin rubbed his nose against Matthew’s cheek, as 
a horse that knows when he is well used and appreciates 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


229 


it, and Matthew made his way back to the house. He 
noticed that during the night the wind had drawn fur- 
ther to the east. 

“And that is a pretty sure sign of a long storm/’ he 
said to Alice. “You won’t get down to the sewing meet- 
ing to-day, I fear.” 

And all day long, practically without cessation, the 
rain fell, steadily, doggedly, drenchingly, upon the vast 
deep mass of snow, washing and melting and settling it, 
until when night again came on the fences were revealed 
and here and there a boulder in the fields and pastures 
had pushed up its black face into the drenching storm. 
For an hour or two about sunset the rain lulled and 
almost ceased, while in the west a rosy flush of the set- 
ting sun struggled to break through the misty clouds. 
But when the sun had set and darkness came on, the 
rain set in again, and for nearly the whole of another 
night poured incessantly down upon the fast disappear- 
ing snow. The roaring of the waterfall pouring over 
the dam, and of the swollen brook, now grown to a 
raging torrent and filling the gorge dangerously full, 
smote the still night and murky morning with ominous 
warning. 

The water lay shining all over the meadow below 


230 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


flooding to the very doors of the cottages, and filling 
many of the cellars. The unmelted snow in the meadow 
and gorge and in the forest below retarded the flow, and 
hacked the water higher and higher above. But the 
force of the water was fast wearing a channel through 
the frozen meadow, sufficient to let the floods through, 
and as the day went on and the water got no higher, 
the anxiety of the cottagers abated. The busy mill kept 
on working as usual, and save for some grave remark 
of here and there a wise old man about the danger, it 
was not generally thought about. The sun came out 
about noon and the warm wind continuing from the 
south, sun and wind together cut down the snow and 
formed the flood even faster than the rain had been 
doing. 

“If the dam holds all right,” said Matthew to Alice 
as they retired that night, “there won’t be any serious 
danger. But it beats all the thaws I have ever seen in 
this region.” 

“Uncle Wilson built the dam, dear. I have heard 
that he did it very thoroughly. They say it goes down 
four feet into the earth, and couldn’t possibly be broken 
down.” 

“Not if it was honestly built,” said Matthew. Now 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


231 


Matthew had never suspected that the dam was not hon- 
estly built. He merely was uttering an instinctive 
word, called out by his knowledge of Wilson Carter’s 
capabilities for wrong doing. 

Carter himself, with the perverse blindness that 
commonly characterizes men of his blunt and hard sen- 
sibilities, remembered indeed his fraud by which he had 
saved several hundred dollars by cheapening the con- 
struction of the dam. But he argued that the frosts 
would hold it secure as yet, even if nothing else availed. 
Indeed, though he did not know it, the frosts had held 
it steady thus far in this winter flood. All the soil to 
a great depth was frozen solid around the stones, mak- 
ing the wall and the banks practically a solid concrete 
mass. But the floods had broken into the frosts now, 
and were eating them out with fearful rapidity. More 
than this, the cleaving and cracking that a mass suffers 
in thawing always leaves dangerous interstices into 
which the creeping water rushes to soften and wash yet 
more fatally the substance of the barrier. 

But when on this February night Wilson Carter 
went to his bed, he said to himself, just as he was falling 
asleep, that there was no danger with the dam. 

The next thing of which he was conscious was a 


232 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


strange motion of the house, and a strange roar all 
around it. 

He leaped from his bed, awakening Mrs. Carter as 
he did so. The sleeping-room was on the lower floor, 
and as he struck the carpet he found his feet buried in 
icy cold water. He gave a cry and groped about for a 
light. The next minute he felt the water rising about 
him, and with a horrible fear of death in his mind, he 
dashed for the door. Mrs. Carter, shrieking, followed 
him. Then, with a second thought, he remembered 
the chambers and, grasping his wife’s arm, together they 
found the stairway and climbed up. 

“My God! it is the dam!” he gasped, shivering in the 
darkness. And then they felt the little cottage swaying 
in the heavy rush of the waters — the mad avenging 
waters of the stolen brook. 

“You built it, you built it!” said the woman sud- 
denly. “You built it and now it will drown us. I shall 
die here now and you are my murderer, Wilson Carter.” 

It was the agonized speech of a woman who for years 
had suffered in the presence of his hardness and wicked- 
ness, and never had spoken before. Now she felt all the 
injustice of it, herself the victim of his wrong-doing. 
She knew that the dam had been fraudulently bulit. She 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


233 


knew that he had done it to save money, that he never 
spent for her. And the words were driven from her now 
like a shock of newly-awakened anger and despair. 

“Curse your tongue!” cried Carter, hoarsely. He 
flung her away from him and groped to find the sky- 
light in the roof. He knew there was one, and while 
she was recovering herself and crouching in terror near 
by he found and opened it. The cottage was swaying 
and bending and creaking in the mad rush of the tide. 
How and then was heard through the night the scream 
of some soul caught in the rushing flood. The dam had 
given way. The shadow abutments of stone had been 
melted out of their frosty bed, and the middle timbers 
had been torn out and swept from their fastenings. 
And down through the valley the mad waters, exultant 
to be released, were spreading like an unleashed lion, 
bearing away all obstacles in their path. 

Carter climbed out upon his swaying roof. “Help — 
help me, too!” shrieked the voice of the woman in the 
space below. But he could not see the way to do it 
easily. He feared that if he returned to help her up the 
skylight, he would be caught inside himself when the 
house should be swept away. He hoped that it would 
be lifted, and go bodily down the current, giving him 


234 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


some chance to be saved. In this moment of emergency 
like any other coward he thought only of saving his 
own miserable life. 

He crept farther out on the roof. The night was 
light enough to enable him to see the cottages still 
standing farther up the slope and to get a confused 
idea of the devastation that was working around him. 
On either bank of the brook above the point reached by 
the flood, he could dimly discern the lights of lanterns 
moving about, and over the roar of the waters, voices, 
and now and then wild screams for help came floating 
to his ears. He knew in that moment that he himself 
had been the marplot chiefly accountable for this dread- 
ful disaster. The dam was working its judgment, the 
stolen brook was roaring its note of justice and retribu- 
tion in his ears. 

But, coward that he was, he raised his voice hoarsely 
and called for help, called again and again. The roar- 
ing waters seemed to mock his voice and throw it back 
upon him without an answer. Now and then he heard 
the screams of his wife issue from the skylight. She was 
begging and entreating him to return and save her. 
She tried vainly to reach the opening. The floods had 
reached the upper floor and doom was creeping near. 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


235 


The man upon the roof and the woman in the 
chamber felt the house creak and bend and then knew 
that they were being swept rapidly along on the bosom 
of the tide. 

Desperate with the danger, the woman renewed her 
efforts. She managed to reach the skylight with her 
hands. Carter, creeping nearer, at last helped her up 
to the roof. 

But it was an unstable place. The house was bend- 
ing down to the flood and might topple over any mo- 
ment. Carter clung to the roof board, and crept away 
from his helpless companion. It was again the cow- 
ard’s instinct that if the house tipped down at last, 
he, who knew how to swim, must not be impeded 
by her. 

Then, all at once, the cottage, breaking slowly and 
twisting into a shapeless mass as it was hurled along, 
sank down on its side, and Carter was swept off into the 
water. He felt a crazed shriek that sounded in his ear, 
and a desperate hand clutching at his shoulder in the 
darkness. The icy water was all around him, and he was 
struggling in it. He shook off, with a rough curse, the 
feeble hand, and she went sweeping away from him into 
the darkness of the flood. 


236 


TEE AVENGING BROOK. 


Carter clung to the timbers of the house. The chill 
of the waters was horrible, but with the wrecked cottage 
he swept on. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE MILLS OF GOD. 


'^j^TTEADY, men! There you are. Lay him on the 
straw. One of you attend to him while I 
drive up. Ell take him to my house.” 


Matthew Rand took the reins and carefully turned 
his double bob sled. The sled bore a ghastly burden. 
Matthew, at the first light of morning, having been out 
with a large number of others half the night, working 
to rescue the imperiled families in the cottages, had 
found Wilson Carter far down the meadow, lying face 
downward on the summit of a ledge where he had crept 
out of the icy waters that swept him away. He was not 
dead, but this had not yet been ascertained by the party 
that were conveying him to Matthew’s house. He lay 
on the straw that had been strewn over the rough floor 
of the sled, and while Matthew drove up across the field 
as carefully as he could, through slush and water, and 
over rocks and hummocks to the road, George Haley and 
another neighbor rubbed and chafed the hands and 



238 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


throat of the chilled and half-drowned man. When at 
Matthew’s door they took him tenderly from the sled, 
Carter roused a trifle, and a low groan was breathed 
through his blue lips, proving him to be still alive. 
They took him into the warm dining-room, and 
there Mrs. Band and Alice busied themselves restor- 
ing him to consciousness, with hot fluids and bricks 
at his feet and every other device they were able 
to think of. 

He lived, came back to consciousness, knew the faces 
around him, and shuddered to remember what had hap- 
pened. But when he could speak, the first words that 
came from his lips made Matthew leave the room with 
a sniff of contempt. 

“I s’pose nobody found my money that was in the 
house, did they ? It might have washed up.” 

Ho one answered, and looking about he caught even 
in his obtuse consciousness some idea of the aversion 
that his words produced. He scowled and said nothing 
more. 

But by and by he remembered his wife. 

“Did they find Marthy?” he asked, with a twitching 
of his lips. And as thought began to grow clearer, he 
felt again that death-clutch on his arm. He remem- 


THE MILLS OF GOD. 


239 


bered that wailing voice sweeping from him m the dark- 
ness. He recalled the words she had spoken in the 
flooded chamber. “Murderer!” That was the name she 
had called him, and he shuddered again when he re- 
membered it. 

After awhile he thought of the poor cottagers. 
“Were there many drowned?” he inquired slowly, look- 
ing around with shifting and uneasy glances. 

“I am glad to say they were all saved except ” 

Alice paused. She hated to tell him that his wife’s 
body had not yet been found. But when Matthew had 
told her in the morning that a wonderful and curious 
thing had happened at the brook, she somehow felt cer- 
tain that God’s providence was in it. For of all the 
twenty cottages or more in the valley, where the flood of 
water had swept through, Wilson Carter’s alone had 
yielded to the force of the waters and been swept away. 
In all the others the dwellers, climbing to the upper 
floors and some of them to the roofs had all escaped. 
In the same level of the valley, and side by side with 
Wilson Carter’s house on either hand, two cottages built 
exactly like his own were standing on their foundations 
at daylight, while the water slowly subsided around 
them. In one of them, two new-born babies, twin chil- 


240 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


dren of a weaver’s family, had slept sweetly all the dread 
night through. 

There was more of this manifest Providence. It 
was not decreed that Wilson Carter’s wife should perish 
in this remarkable flood. While her husband was 
whirled away by the waters, she, floundering in the 
dreadful darkness, felt her feet on the land and, strange 
to say, made her way alone to the high ground, and at 
daylight to a house far down the meadow where, un- 
known to the people at the factory and at Matthew’s 
she was cared for until communication could he had 
with her friends. 

But before Wilson Carter could hear this piece of 
news, he was raving horribly in the delirium of a fever. 
Clutching at nothing, picking the bed coverings with his 
fingers, straining to see imaginary shapes in the candle 
light, moaning of dams and water powers, and fighting 
off the fever phantoms that clutched at his brain and 
terrified him into shrieking frenzy, he lived over, appar- 
ently a hundred times, the experiences of his fatal sins. 
The years rolled hack. Paul more than others, hut Paul 
reproaching him and haunting him sat on his pillow, 
stood at the angles of the room, showed him the pale, 
drowned face that had lain in its still coffin five years 
ago. 


THE MILLS OF GOD. 


241 


And the man whom he had wronged, Matthew, 
and Alice whose father he had slighted so on the death- 
bed, cared for him with tenderness that only the Chris- 
tian, forgiving enemies, could feel. They thought no 
more of his sins in that hour. Mrs. Carter also was sick, 
and they watched over both incessantly. Night after 
night Matthew remained the long hours through by the 
sick man’s bed, waiting for the fever to burn itself out. 
He felt no bitterness against this stricken soul, hut 
only prayed God that Carter might not die impenitent. 

“After all these centuries of Christian teaching,” 
said Matthew to Alice one day, “it ought not to be so 
surprising that a man should love his enemy. It is, after 
all, only the simplest Christian thing we are doing when 
we care for him. One should take no pride at all in it, 
I fancy. If God will only soften his heart!” 

“You couldn’t be proud if you tried,” said Alice 
with a smile of appreciation. “But you are quite right 
about it, Matthew. I only wonder if it will have any 
effect on him.” 

“I hope, and yet I fear. I fear when he gets well, 
if God restores his health, he will be the same Wilson 
Carter.” 

But when at last Carter did get well, he was not quite 


242 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


the same. He said nothing but in his silence, now and 
then, he groaned, and walked about listless and dejected. 
He returned with his wife to the farm house. He said 
not a word of thanks to Matthew and Alice for their 
care. He seldom spoke to his wife. 

But one day Matthew chanced to be crossing Carter’s 
hack lot on his way to drive home some cattle that had 
strayed. It was a bright, still, spring day, and a long 
walk had made him thirsty. He turned aside to go to 
a spring that he knew of in the direction of Carter’s 
house. Before reaching it, while approaching a high 
stone fence that lay in his way, he heard sounds of a 
human voice on the other side of the wall. He was 
close to the wall before he was thus apprized that some 
one was on the other side. He stopped short. Then 
he heard Wilson Carter’s voice, groaning, and uttering 
sentences. “Almighty God! Paul will overlook it if 
thou wilt,” groaned Carter. Then there was a pause, 
during which it seemed as if the man were listening for 
some response. Then he broke out again: “He thought 
if I did wrong it would find me out. Matthew’s pros- 
pered, and I’ve been damned been damned, 

been damned. Almighty God, ’twas the brook. 

It rose up in judgment! It rose up in judgment.” 


THE MILLS OF GOD. 


243 


There was another long pause, and then again con- 
science spoke through the man’s lips. “Matthew took 
care of me, and I let Samuel die like a dog. It’s judg- 
ment — judgment — judgment. Almighty God, what 
shall a wretched man do to get rid of the judgment?” 

“Repent,” said Matthew, driven by the Spirit of 
God to speak. 

There was a frightened cry, and a white haggard 
face came up and peered over the wall. Matthew, who 
had not seen Carter for some weeks, was shocked at the 
ghastly, drawn aspect of the man’s face. 

“Oh! it’s you, then! Well, s’pose I do repent 

that won’t bring him to life, will it?” 

“Paul is in heaven, Mr. Carter. If you wish to see 
him, by and by ” 

“Stop, for God’s sake! I can’t bear it. I do repent. 
It’s the brook. Day and night I hear it, roaring and 
roaring as it did that night. And it drowned him. 
Can’t you see I’m nigh worn out. If I could repent 

and take it all back but it’s too late. Do you think 

it’s too late?” 

Then Matthew Rand, with the light of an angel in 
his face, vaulted the wall, and began to speak to a help- 
less sinner crushed under the load of his sin. He told 


244 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


liim of the Christ, the suffering and dying One, for in 
that moment there was no other word for a lost man. 
And while he spoke, somehow, between the two, the 
halo of the sunshine fell more softly, as if the radiance 
of Christ’s own face had come in. Alone together these 
two men seemed, but there was Another there, for after 
a little the hard, haggard look began to go out of Wilson 
Carter’s face, and then, sobbing, with a broken heart, 
he went down on his face before the prayer of Matthew, 
who alone before his God poured out his very heart for 
this undone sinner. 

********** 

The mill was vacated, and one night a year later 
was burned to the ground. The cottages were moved 
away or torn down. Unvexed and unimpeded once more, 
the brook flowed on down its rocky gorge and through 
the meadow. Matthew’s growing children play on its 
banks in the summer sunshine and skate or coast over 
the frozen pool in winter. At night it sings still its 
peaceful song, audible to Matthew in his chamber where 
he kneels to pray. 

And for awhile, beside its babbling course there 
daily walked a sad-faced, stooping man, thinking ever- 
more on the judgment and the mercy of God. His 


TEE MILLS OF GOD. 


245 


wife went before him on the long journey by way of 
the old graveyard on the hill. But he remained to play 
with Matthew’s children and to do good to the poor of 
the village. 

And then one day they missed him, and searching 
the haunts where he more often walked, they found him 
with peace on his worn face, lying on the very spot 
where he had found the faithful dog howling on the 
day Paul was drowned. 

The will he had destroyed in his repentance, and 
Alice inherited what remained of his property. The 
stolen brook had long since reverted to its rightful 
owners. Matthew liked the sound of its music, and 
after the experience he had had with the factory, he 
could not bring himself to build any more dams, and so 
the brook remains in its freedom to this very day. The 
birds are undisturbed that fly among the bending oaks, 
and the squirrels and the trout still shyly play in their 
long-accustomed haunts. 

One sunshiny day when the church service was 
ended, it happened that again Matthew and George 
stood on the little bridge where we saw them first. Alice 
too was there, and their two children. Both Matthew 
and George remembered that former Sunday. 


246 


THE AVENGING BROOK. 


“I am perfectly satisfied, Matthew,” said George, 
smiling down upon the placid brook. “It all worked out 
on your plan, and that’s a fact. God does rule, after all.” 

“In his hands are the ways of men. We believe it 
because he was willing that we should see it actually 
worked out. But it would have been just as true if we had 
not. But of the dead we may speak no evil. It was God’s 
judgment and it was God’s mercy. Blessed be God!” 

“The mercy of God is without limits, and his judg- 
ments are unsearchable,” said Alice, smiling at her hus- 
band. “We ought to believe, after what we have seen, 
that he is not hidden in. some past age. Has he not 
shown us himself — in the brook?” . 

“Yes,” replied Matthew reverently. “And that re- 
minds me that I have a suggestion. In the old Bible 
days when God’s people came to some place where God 
wrought wonders for them, to that place they gave 
always a name. What good name shall we give to this 
brook, dear?” 

“To others it may be always Sweetwater; but to us 
let it be ■” 

She paused and looked at Matthew reflectively. 

“The Brook of Judgment,” said Matthew. 

“Of Judgment and Mercy,” said Alice. 

THE END. 


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